Lighting and Metal Shader Questions (solved)

exsillium_f9d4d3a5d5

I'm still getting used to working with mesh lights and the such.  I've been trying to get my understanding worked out and have been digging through the forums.  Please forgive any repeats of questions already answered because I havent been able to find the relevant threads.

 

1.  Mesh Lights Showing Up as Reflections or White Patches on Surfaces.  I jave a render where the background texture is set with a non reflective shaded and texture.  The problem isn't a standard mirror like reflection, it is simply that their is a fat glare appearing on the surface in the form of the mesh light in question.  I located a suggestion to set the Cutout Opacity to 0.001 (may be off a zero, not looking at my program right now).  This removed the problem.  But, that led to my metal shades showing up black.  Is there any other way to deal with this problem?

 

2.   Metal Shaders Coming up Black in Render.  In case the above isn't the reason, could someone let me know?  They are showing up under the environment lights in testing, but this is an indoor scene using scene lights only.

 

3.  Making Mesh Lights Invisible in Render.  Sure I missed this one since I am sure it is common.  But, I would like to know the how.  I have presets for Iray mesh lights from Callada sets off of deviant art.  They work fine normally and the metal issue only showed up with the changes in #1.  

 

Please for the sake of my fragile sanity.  :)

 

Edit:  It was lack of knowledge on my part, I got it figured out.  Thanks!

Richard Haseltine

You need to remembr that iray, at least in Photoreal mode, is trying to simulate the way reality works. Lights are visible, and metals do show black if there's nothing (lights or environment) for them to reflect. If the placement of the lights is producing ugly reflections then you need to move the lights, as a real-world photographer would.