Transparent Reflections for VRay Lights

[brobins]

It would be great for VRay Lights to have the option of mapping Opacity.

For example, When using A VRay Plane Light with a mapped Softbox Texture to produce a circular Spot Light, the black areas are still visible in Reflections (If Affect Reflections is ticked on the Light) thus blocking any other Reflection that may appear behind the Light.

I realize that a current workaround is to un-tick Affect Reflections and create an object of the size with a VrayLightMtl assigned with appropriate Opacity mapped, but it would be great if we could control all this through the Light itself to save on set up times.

Another thing I think would be handy is to have some sort of Viewport Representation of the 'Rectangle Light Options' Directional Parameter (similar to that of the standard 3ds Max Light Parameters)

What do you think?

Apologies if these things have already been requested in the past.

Ben

[vlado]

The V-Ray light will be transparent where the alpha of the texture is black.

Best regards,
Vlado

[brobins]

Ah yes, so would there be a way of including an Alpha into the Softbox Texture ?

Thanks,

[vlado]

If you tell how to compute that alpha One possibility is to add an option that makes the "base color" transparent - would that be enough?

Best regards,
Vlado

[brobins]

Hey, thanks for the response.

I'm not the most technical guy in the world but how about a 'Alpha from RGB Intensity' option or similar?

Obviously the Softbox Texture can be ran through an Output map to achieve the same result, so maybe I have just answered my own question

Even better would be an Opacity map slot within the Softbox Texture (or indeed on the Light itself) with a 'Multiply Color by Opacity' option.

Your suggestion also sounds good thinking about it! Hmm

[vlado]

I'm not the most technical guy in the world but how about a 'Alpha from RGB Intensity' option or similar?

That might not work too well for colored lights, f.e. if you make them bluish, you might end up with a slightly transparent light where you don't want it.

Best regards,
Vlado

[brobins]

I get you.

Something to think about here maybe.

How about something similar to the Opacity controls on a VRayLightMtl on the VRayLights maybe?

So you could map the colour and Opacity separately, would offer a little more control.

[im.thatoneguy]

Did this ever get added? I can't use the VrayAreaLight texture because I don't want black edges in my reflections. I do use the VrayAreaLightTex as an opacity map on VrayMaterials but like you said that's a hassle. It would be really nice to be able to drive the transparency not the color of the light from the Vray Area Light texture.

[Midiaeffects]

Having an "Alpha from Luminance" option in the light can be nice for a simpler, straightforward workflow. I would also add that the light color should be multiplied by the texture color, so we can tint the texture with color temperatures and instance the same texture while having independent colors.

But you can have transparent textured lights just fine right now and there's a number of ways to achieve that in max. In the texture map output rollout, checking "Alpha from RBG Intensity" works just fine. If the texture doesn't have the output options, or you are working with composite maps, you can use the "Output" texture and check the same option there. I also rather Ouput map better then Color Correction for adjusting colors, especially on HDR maps. If you want to control color and transparency separately you can use the "Mask" texture.

Regards,

-Eugenio