VRayLightMaterial behaves odd in V-Ray 7

[JonasNöll]

Hi,

the VRayLightMaterial behaves different in V-Ray 7 compared to V-Ray 6
In V-Ray 7 the Opacity Slot now doesn't accept any color input anymore, anything of color will be desaturated.
In V-Ray 6 that was possible, which was VERY useful as you could just leave the Color to pure white and have the opacity control color AND transparency at the SAME TIME through one map.
Now since that doesn't work anymore it makes the setup much more troublesome as well as scenes render completely differently.

Was that change intentional? Because it is NOT HELPFUL at all and makes everything much more troublesome. Could you please make it behave the same as before again.

[dimitar_panayotov]

Hi Jonas! Yes, it was changed to work similarly to the VRayMtl. In general, controlling the colors from the color map slot would be better and it is expected to be used for that. You could achieve the same result by applying the Falloff map to the opacity slot. I do understand the confusion, but in order to keep consistency between VRayMtl and LightMtl it's better to work as it is in V-Ray 7.

[JonasNöll]

Hi Dimitar,

sorry I have to respectfullly disagree here here because now you can not control color and transparency at the same time but it is unnecessarily split into 2 separate options. That in fact was the ONLY reason why I use the light material in these kind of situations. Now the option to control color and opacity at the same time is taken away for no apparent benefit. Additionally shaders from libraries render fundamentally different now in V-Ray 7. It is not possible to get "exactly" the same result splitting them up in 2 separate slots. I tried and the results look very different. If there is an option to get exactly the same result pls let me know because from my testing there is no easy way to get the same output. It works and behaves very different. Even if there was it would make working with it much more complicated because now you have to deal with two separate slots I don't see any upsides to this choice, existing scenes and shaders now render fundamentally different and a very useful option was taken away just to unnecessarily complicate things...

[vlado]

Hey Jonas, we might end up reverting that change or at least adding an option if the mono or color output of a texture should be used - thanks for bring it to attention.

Best regards,
Vlado

[JonasNöll]

Awesome Vlado, thanks you for considering, I'm keeping my fingers crossed!