Iray Emissives Not Found In Surfaces Tab

gfdamron1

I'm trying to convert a primitive, in this case a plane, into an emissive surface to add light to an interior scene. A couple video tutorials have led me to the point of selecting the plane, then opeining the Surfaces tab and looking under Presets to locate Iray in the list. I have expanded Iray in this list, but Emissives doesn't appear in the list. Have I missed a step?

Gordig

You don't have to use a dedicated emissive shader preset; you can simply apply the Iray Uber Surface shader (or, if your rendering engine was set to Iray when you created the primitive, it should already have that shader), then scroll down to the "emissive color" setting, change that to anything other than pure black, and the emissive settings will appear.

NorthOf45

The default shader presets that come with DAZ Studio should have at least the one basic Emissive. Have you installed the "Default Resources for DAZ Studio"? The preset lists you are exploring are Smart Content-based, using the supplied categories, which can be problematic at times.

Try looking in your Content Library under DAZ Studio Formats -> (library) -> Shader Presets -> Iray -> DAZ Uber. There you should find the Emissive, which will only really set up the necessary channels, but probably not with the intensity or color you want. You'll have to play with that a bit. To replace or ignore any existing bitmaps (base, cutout opacity, etc.), use the modifier key (ctrl or cmd) when applying the shader. You will get the load options dialog where you can choose accordingly.

PerttiA

Not to forget, you need to be in Surfaces\Editor (not in presets) with the surface selected to apply the shader from the Content Library.

In the Editor-tab, you can expand the material tree and there you can also find the "emissive color" setting that was already mentioned.

gfdamron1

Thank you so much for your replies! I have been able to create an emissive plane and light a figure. The emissive plane makes a very nice and versatile light. My new challenge is locating the plane in an interior scene. That is, finding where a newly created plane appears in a scene so I can adjust it.

Gordig

gfdamron1 said:

Thank you so much for your replies! I have been able to create an emissive plane and light a figure. The emissive plane makes a very nice and versatile light. My new challenge is locating the plane in an interior scene. That is, finding where a newly created plane appears in a scene so I can adjust it.

Sadly, DS doesn't give you the same options for placing primitives in a scene that they do for lights or cameras, but you can still use the align tool. Simply select the object to which you want the primitive aligned (say, a wall or other object in your immediate field of view), click the icon that looks like a horizontal line graph, then hold control and click to select the object you want aligned (your new plane). Set at least the X and Z axes to align however you want, then click apply.