Proper use of SoftboxTexture

[ben_hamburg]

Hi,

since I recently did a bunch of Viz-Jobs and I´m still struggling with good Light rigs for very reflective/refractive objects, I tried out the new Vray SoftboxTexture.
So I simply assigned it to a rectangular Vraylight as texture, but now I´m seeing the black frame/vignettes in my reflections, which don´t look to pretty, especially in refractive materials.
I guess the only way around that would be to use mesh lights instead and use the softboxtexture as opacity map, or am I missing something here? Apart from that - why use a softboxtexture in the first place if I could just use a gradient ramp?

[Macker]

Yeah, you could just use a gradient ramp; but the softbox has far more features, such as hotspots, etc.

[Raven]

It would be nice if it could have a transparency channel in the softbox for vray lights.

[kosso_olli]

Try to plug the softbox into an Output-Map and check "Alpha from rgb intensity" before assigning it to the vray light. Tested it just now and it works.

[ben_hamburg]

Ah, that sounds great! Always good to know what to use those wacky maps for you never use...

[kosso_olli]

Output map is really powerfull when used correctly. I need it all the time.