Reality to Iray - lighting questions

CMacks

Although Reality was terrific, dealing with all the surfaces finally did me in so I just moved to using Iray.  Two great features from Reality were

1) the ability to change lighting levels during a render, and

2) the ability to look through a mesh light to aim them (using a free add on)

Are there any solutions for these in Iray?  Preferably free ones...

thanks!

fastbike1

Mesh lights are not as necessary in Iray since you can have geometry with an iray Spotlight. The spotlight can easily mimic thing like softboxes etc. Mesh lights are still usuable, but not as important to get soft shadows.

Mattymanx

Just to be clear, Reality was nothing more then a bridge between Daz Studio and Lux Render.  The ability to tweak lighting output during the render was in Lux Render.

As for mesh lights you can look through, I personally use these all the time - https://www.daz3d.com/iradiance-hdr-mesh-lights-volume-2-for-iray

CMacks

Thanks.  It wasn't hard to parent a point light to a Reality Light System camera and then convert it to a disc light.  Now I can look through it to point it easily and it seems to work well.  However, if I convert the light to rectangle, the light is 90 degrees rotated wrt the camera and I can't figure out how to fix it.  For the other thing, Iray really needs to include dynamic light adjustments.  I miss it.

AbnerK

When you say 'mesh lights' if you're talking about using an emissive on a plane then I wouldn't bother, but if you really want to then you can go to Parameters>Point At and select the bit you want it to point at. Sometimes you have to switch the Point At on and off if you move something but it does work and I wouldn't have the plane set with more than one division. I would use the spots though. You can look through those in the preview window and you can have full control of all the settings very easily. They use less memory than an emissive with geometry too. 

CMacks said:

Although Reality was terrific, dealing with all the surfaces finally did me in so I just moved to using Iray.  Two great features from Reality were

1) the ability to change lighting levels during a render, and

2) the ability to look through a mesh light to aim them (using a free add on)

Are there any solutions for these in Iray?  Preferably free ones...

thanks!

 

CMacks

Thank you!  I hadn't figured out about using the spot lights yet!  

fastbike1

Geometry is your friend. Plus, the Iray spotlights render much faster than any but the simplest (least divisions/polys) mesh lights.  

CMacks said:

Thank you!  I hadn't figured out about using the spot lights yet!  

 

CMacks

When I switch the spotlight to rectangle, I get "light portal" as an option.  This is convienient to show the size of the rectangle, but I don't understand what it does to the light.  What is it supposed to do?