"Hidden Lights" option to only look at hidden by category

[Dave_Wortley]

The Render "hidden lights" option catches people out, so much so I'm having deja vu writing this. Would be much better if it only rendered lights that were hidden by the 'hide by category' feature of max, not ones where their isHidden property is on.

[^Lele^]

Heya Dave.
edit: i got it backwards.

It's a tricky one, how'd you figure it'd work in practice?
Would a new checkbox for "hidden by category" work?
So manually hidden lights would still be optionally skippable (and behave as if off).

[Dave_Wortley]

I'd switch the checkbox to a dropdownlist....

"Only Visible Lights"
"Hidden by Category"
"All Hidden Lights"


I find lots of artists turn off Lights in the viewport using the category and then render, it's black, so they turn on 'hidden lights' and then when things get more complicated later on someone else might pick up the file, start making layers for lights, turn off visibility per layer and then still get those lights contributing.

[^Lele^]

Makes sense to me.
The rest of the relevant classes (geometry/shapes/particles) stay as they are?
Or should it change accordingly?
I'm thinking of nodes driving other nodes, so hidden, but then the geo category hidden too for whatever reason at rendertime.

[Dave_Wortley]

Max has the 'render hidden geometry' which vray ignores I think? I don't think any other category needs options...