Survey about scattering V-Ray lights

[dimitar_panayotov]

Hi everyone. I would like to make a small survey about the behavior of the instanced light when it's turned on and off while it's being distributed by ChaosScatter.
Currently, when a light used as an instanced model is turned off this doesn't change the appearance of the scattered lights. They continue to emit light. You don't need to hide the instanced model, but you can't control whether the scattered lights are on or off from the main source.
Let's mark this method as A.
Another approach would be: If you turn off the main light (instanced model), it should turn off the scattered lights as well. However, if you want to eliminate the effect of only that light you will need to hide it and uncheck "hidden lights" in the render setting. Let's mark this method as B.
Please let us know which method is more suitable for you: A- current behavior, or B- alternative behavior.

[dlparisi]

you can't control whether the scattered lights are on or off from the main source.

For option A, how do you control whether instance lights are on or off if you can't control it with the source light?

[dimitar_panayotov]

Well, that's why we are considering other options. Currently, the scattered lights are ON no matter what. It could be an option to set the intensity of the instanced light to 0. Technically you can control everything else- color, intensity, etc. It's just the On/Off switch.
In a nutshell, Method B gives the ability to turn off the lights from the source light. However, we wanted to see if there are people who use the current behavior in a workflow before we take action.
So I will try to keep this topic on top of the stack while we collect more opinions.

[will_will]

B.

It's more like instanced object we knew,
Like meshes, if I need to shut the main light , i'd like to uncheck the 'renderable' property.

[dlparisi]

Thanks for the explanation as I haven't instanced lights with vray scatter (honestly I didn't know it could). In that case I'd vote for option B since it behaves like any instanced light does, as noted above. I'd either hide it (and turn off hidden lights) or tuck it out of camera view as necessary.

[Joelaff]

B please. Thanks.

[Joelaff]

B please. Thanks.

[flat]

1 vote for method B

[Morbid Angel]

We would typically instance the light but then hide the source light object. We would like to control the instanced lights on/off and other attributed with it, but main source light can be hidden. So option B would be better.