Circle shape for lights

[WobiNich]

Hi,

I'd really like to have a circle shape option in addition to the rectangular one, like mental ray has. I use that quite a lot with mental ray as it is nice for area-spotlights. This should be texturabel just as the rectangular one (where the edges of the texture just get cut off..since textures are alway rectangular). There wouldn't even be the need for new paramters as it could just use the radius from the sphere type option. Would be nice to have that...


Greet Ben

[bardo]

did you tried with vraylight in "object" mode?
you can create the shape you want to use as shape of vraylight.

[WobiNich]

Yes of course. But as you know a perfect circle would need an infinite number of polys to render really round. especially when seen in reflections. But the more polys you have the more ineffective gets the rendering. If this would be implemented as a funtion there is no need for polys and therefore much more efficient...

[simmsimaging]

Did you try texture mapping a vray light? Works well for me.

[WobiNich]

Yes, I know But you will get black edges and see the rectangular shape whenever the background behind the light is not black. See what I mean here:

[simmsimaging]

Try turning on the "alpha from RGB intensity" in the Output rollout. That should do the trick.

b

[Wobi]

Thanks for the hint. Will try that tomorrow. But, I still would like to see a circular shape as an option in the lights. This way you would always have to use a texture just to get the circle shape. So if you want to use bitmap as texture you will have to create some composite map and black out the edges with a circular ramp or whatever just to get the circle shape. It just would make things a lot easier (and more efficient renderwise I think) to have this as an option...

[simmsimaging]

That's true, but it's something you only have to do once, then you can save the composite map and just swap out the bitmap later as needed. Not too painful, but a circular light would save that step. I can only presume it's not trivial if Vlado hasn't already added it.

/b