vray light blocks sun and direct light ??!

[stevesideas]

Hi guys,

Ive either just hit a mind block or something has changed in vray....

I used to setup my vray lights at the window, create a vray sun and sky system and have light coming in from both the vray light and sun. Now it seems I cant get the sun to shine through the vray light without making the vray light invisible...which i dont want.

What am i doing wrong ?

Thanks

Steve

[timmatron]

I think that works the way it is supposed to. Why though, do you not want your lights to be invisible? You can still have them visible to specular and reflections. And if you want white, or any color outside the windows, just set that in the environment slot.

[vlado]

Steve, you need to make the V-Ray light invisible; then it will let other lights through it.

Best regards,
Vlado

[stevesideas]

But if I make the vray light invisible it loses its physical presence, ie...its actual whiteness, which is what i want for this scene. I dont want to be able to see the outside at all, just a white exterior from the vray light....but i also need the sun to be shining through. I used to be able to have this happen in previous versions, but now i cant...

Im just thinking, maybe there should be a recieve shadows option for vray lights ?

[vlado]

This was never possible in previous versions either; you can achieve what you want in several ways - for example, by making your environment white, or by placing a self-illuminated plane that is not visible to GI. Making your environment white is probably the better way to do this, as it will make the scene more physically plausible.

Best regards,
Vlado

[stevesideas]

ok, thanks, i'll give that a go. Not sure what i did before then

[sv]

vlado - slightly off-topic but could you implement an 'affect alpha' option for VrayLights?

For instance i'm having a different but similar problem to steveiouk, which could be simply solved if the white light i have placed at a window didn't appear in the alpha channel.

I know i could make the light invisible, set the max environment colour to white, then go to the vray::environment and override the max environment so no GI is cast - but it seems like so many steps to go through in order to just make sure i have nothing showing in the alpha, but still a white colour in the RGB.

I think this would be incredibly helpful as well for the DomeLight, just so you can render a sky into the RGB, but quickly separate the background out like you can with normal max environment. again - i know this isn't quite correct for compositing and a black or white background work much better, but sometimes it's just nice to separate the sky via the alpha, tweek very slightly, and have a finished render, rather than having to render the scene twice - one with just a domelight only for the sky, one without any sky but the rest of the geometery and do the compositing after.

[vlado]

It might be possible - I'll have to look at this.

Best regards,
Vlado