Renderable shader with self-illumination, that can also be displayed in the viewport?

[Alexx31]

Is there any material in 3dsMax, that uses self-illumination and can render with Vray AND can be seen in the viewport?

I need very often self-illumination materials, to render movie or layout elements (which are the base of my 3D scenes)
The sad thing is, they display only black in the viewport!
So I find myself all the time switching between diffuse on (for viewport) and off (for rendering), which is quite annoying and sometimes I'm also forgetting it when starting to render.

Thanks for help

[hermit.crab]

VRayMtl's Self-Illumination is already visible in the viewport. Make sure you are on either "Standard" or "High Quality" (this works for Nitrous Direct3D 11 Display Driver and is set in Customize>Preferences>Viewports) viewport mode.

[Alexx31]

It's unfortunately not visible in Standard mode. And High Quality mode is for my large scenes too computation-intensive.
I have the driver set correctly.

The workstation has 2 x RTX 3090 graphic cards!

Attched screenshots

[Joelaff]

I usually can't get Self Illumination maps to show up either. I end up using a Max Shell Material and setting up the normal VRayMtl as the baked for rendering and a separate VRayMtl with the map connected to diffuse for display. Slight pain in the butt, and messy, but it works.

[hermit.crab]

Check if the map has the "Show Shaded Material in Viewport" option activated or switch the Shaded Viewport of the VRayMtl to "Show Realistic Material in Viewport". Both options are located in the SME toolbar.

[Joelaff]

"Show Realistic Material in Viewport" work most of the time, especially in later version of VRay, but, as mentioned it can get slow on heavy models, even with the latest hardware. Definitely room for more optimization there (I assume that is a Max thing).

[kosso_olli]

This is working totally fine here on my end, as described by Aleksandar.

[M.Max]

it is a very common issue indeed, but the solution is pretty simple:
1-Use VRaylightmtl and set the color to BLACK
2-Select the Bitmap and set it to be visible in viewport using "Show Shaded Material in viewport", this option DOESN'T work with the VRaylightmtl so you need to set it for the Bitmap itself .