Grasshopper - Simple Material Emission Intensity Input?

[paul-twoatsix]

The Emission input in the Simple Material component in grasshopper currently supports Colour and Bitmap inputs - when are we going to be able to control the Intensity of the emission? I don't see the point curently as it's hardly any brighter with the emission input plugged in than not plugged in at the moment!

[iva_mancheva]

Hello paul-twoatsix ,

Thank you for the feedback. While unfortunately it won't be possible to implement an Intensity parameter, I logged two improvement suggestions based on your request. The one is to allow using higher values for the color, this will give you more control and allow making the material illuminate more. The other is about implementing a "Compensate EV" option.

For better results please make sure to use a black color for Diffuse, Reflection and Glossiness when working with emissive "Mtl Simple" materials.

Kind regards,
Iva

[ivelina_mincheva]

Dear paul-twoatsix,
Support for higher color values in Grasshopper will be available in the next update.

Higher values than 255 for RGB colors will be usable for the Emission color in the Mtl Simple component. Open the Emission’s “AColorTex persistent data” window (right click on Emission in the Mtl Simple and then select “Manage AColorTex collection”) and set the Red, Green, Blue colors with the desired value (with higher than 255 values for more intensive emission results).
Please, see the example:


Best regards,
Ivelina

[paul-twoatsix]

Hi ivelina_mincheva. Sorry I'm just getting around to testing this now.

How do I control this without having to click into the AColorTex? I'd like to be able to just plug a swatch component and a number slider in so I can adjust brightness easily. Multiplying a colour obviously doesn't work as it's capped at 255,255,255. Equaly spliting the colour text (via a panel) and multiplying the individual numbers, then re-joining doesn't input correctly as the Emission input is expecting a 'color' not 'text' and once again plugging the numbers into a 'color' component caps it back to 255,255,255...

No body get's the brightness of their lights correct the first time, and if my light is not a R,G, B or white in colour it's extremely difficult to fine tune at all in this way - and completely impossible to animate.

Below are examples of what I've tried.

[ivelina_mincheva]

Hello paul-twoatsix.

Currently, the only way to change the Mtl Simple's color values with higher values is in the AColorTex window. Unfortunately, string parsing is implemented only in the dialog window because of the Grasshopper's requirements. The string that is connected to the component converts to a file path.
Our developers have just added support for parsing strings in the input parameters directly which can be connected to the Grasshopper's component, so the colors can be changed without using the AColorTex window.

Example:


Best regards,
Ivelina

[paul-twoatsix]

Amazing - thank you ivelina_mincheva (and your developers) - I look forward to testing this one out in the next build.