Let emissive light only travel to a certain distance

Illidanstorm

I have a magic ball which is just a sphere with an emissive surfe in purple. It needs to be relatively bright to archive the desired effect, but I don't want this emissive surfe to color the whole figure in purple. Is there a way I can control the distance this light travels to?

Sven Dullah

It can be easily done in 3DL, but I don't know if IRay allows it. Why not simply render a version with a lower light intensity on the sphere, and raise intensity and do a spotrender, then combine in an image editor? Or just do some postwork?

Fishtales

Decrease the light lumen and adjust the tone mapping to compensate.

LenioTG

You can add other lights with different colors that cover that purple in other parts of the scene, and adjust the exposure value to your liking.

JonnyRay

In Iray, you have the same controls on lights that you would have in the real world; so like Fishtales and TGFan4 suggested, you can adjust the strength and exposure of your image, or overwhelm the emissive with other lights.

The other option if you're open to post work, would be to use Iray canvases, separating environment lighting from a light group with your magic ball in it and then adjust the strengths and overall exposure / contrast / etc. in GIMP or Photoshop or the editor of your choice.

vex3d_22560

Using an IES profile will help too

Joe Cotter

The best answer is what JonnyRay said if you can wrap your head around canvases. Besides it getting the most controlled results, you get the bonus of it greatly expanding your creative options and growing you as an artist. The downside is the learning curve. That being said, sometimes we end up settle for something good enough because the best costs too much for us. Good luck.