Object Lights

[Koen Hofmeester]

-

Edited January 27 by Koen Hofmeester

[symek]

I would do everything to avoid using Global Illumination. Mantra doesn't have geometry lights - which lets faces to shine as they were area lights. So the only solution is to let geometry emit light in global illumination mode - which is bad since this is going to render very slow.

1. I would try to instance lights on a points if your geometry. Try how dense they should be to mimic lit light. Add point if needed (use point cloud?) Maybe you can even instance area light that roughly match geometry area?

Then you apply something like a VEX Supermaterial with emission control, you match these two (lights instanced on geo and geo emission itself - light shouldn't illuminate its geometry as I think). And you're ready.

2. Also with old odforce.net Point Clouds shaders pack comes a one shader that uses points in PC as a light source. This is another way to go.

3. Little more advance trick would be to use photons. Just emit them from your lightning geometry (from a light behind it) and use stored diffused photons to add its energy to illumination of environment.

4. Alternatively you could find "Honey" exporter on this forum that lets you render in Sunflow from Houdini (only H. commercial 8.1). Perhaps the only advantage of this renderer is an ability to turn any geometry into area light. You could render only one "shining" pass to compose with the rest from mantra. Sunflow lacks proper AA quality and many other things but it render area light crazy fast!

Try!

cheers,

sy.

Edited December 4, 2007 by SYmek