VRay Dirt and lights

[NicoC]

Hello,

Not sure if it's already been reported, but I've recently noticed that VRay lights are considered by VRay Dirt ! let's say a light is pretty close to an object (ceiling for example), one will see the light "silhouette" in the dirt result (it was inside an ExtraTex RE in my example). Can this be fixed, please ? I mean, I can't see any reason why one would want this kind of behavior ...

Thanks

[Joelaff]

While I do agree it seems odd, VRay lights exhibit a lot of qualities like physical objects. They cast shadows too, IIRC.

You should be able to exclude the lights from the VRayDirt node with the exclude settings.

[NicoC]

You should be able to exclude the lights from the VRayDirt node with the exclude settings.

Sure, but I'd rather BY FAR an option in Dirt map like "Consider Lights" or something like that. Excluding lights manually for each and every scene isn't an option.

[Alex_M]

While I do agree it seems odd, VRay lights exhibit a lot of qualities like physical objects. They cast shadows too, IIRC.

You should be able to exclude the lights from the VRayDirt node with the exclude settings.

I think you are right. Vlado mentioned this recently in one of my threads where I asked why lights block GI. He mentioned that they act as physical objects in scene and that's why it happens. Maybe the problem can be solved with a switch added somewhere in each light that says "Affect GI". He mentioned that the only solution for now is to put a VrayColor map in the texture slot of the light with an alpha parameter set to "0". This does work but it's an additional step that adds up to setup time.

While I agree that blocking the GI is the physically correct behavior, I think we should have more flexibility. In many cases we use lights that act as boosters - just below the ceilings of rooms for example in order to add some fill light, and blocking the GI is not desired as the ceilings get dark.

[Joelaff]

No doubt a switch to ignore the lights would be better. Just trying to help you solve your immediate issue to deliver your render.

I too think that there probably ought to be a setting to have lights completely ignored by GI, shadows, AO ((dirt), etc. One of the principle advantages of CGI is that you can position lights without them getting in the way, like they do in the real world.