How to make emitters invisible?

[TheAllusionisst]

Quick Question, I am trying to use a plane and a sphere with a Maxwell emitter shader applied and the geometries show up and render in Viz 2006. If I hide them or make them non renderable they don't emit light, is there a way to make them so they don't show up but light the environment?

[dave davidson]

from what i know about maxwell i would say NO, this is due to the fact its based on real life situations, ie if its casting light in the real world it will be seen by the camera and this is true for maxwell.

 

if this is wrong then someone correct me

[AdamT]

That's correct. It's the downside to physical correctness--no CG trickery. So light exclusion is out, near/far clipping is out, shadow-only lights are out, etc.

[TheAllusionisst]

Thanks guys, I thought there must be a work around because I never saw emitters in anybody elses scenes

[AJLynn]

The emitters are either off camera, or in the places where a light bulb should be. You're not thinking Maxwellianly.

[yog]

In a simular vien, if you have ever attended a real life photo shoot of a building interior, you would be surprised how many extra lights and reflectors are needed to make the photo look "natural". It's quite an art hiding all this mass of equipment from the camera FOV.

[AJLynn]

...Which is one of the annoying things about Maxwell - lighting can be as hard as real photo shoot lighting.

[smeggy]

We should have an extensive library of lighting props in the goodies section in the NL forums like Flash umbrellas, reflector cards, gels, barn door lights, and diffusers. Plus downloadable studio lighting setups all ready to grab for that all-important Maxwell 'photo shoot'

[Ernest Burden III]

We should have an extensive library of lighting props in the goodies section in the NL forums like Flash umbrellas, reflector cards, gels, barn door lights, and diffusers. Plus downloadable studio lighting setups all ready to grab for that all-important Maxwell 'photo shoot'

 

That's a really good idea.

 

SketchUp includes a fairly broad set of photo shoot props, though its geared towards moviemaking.

 

The fact is, making the parts needed to set up a shoot would be fairly easy, and so sharing them would be great.

 

I've never done photography that way, sowhile I know how to make a camera perform, I do not know the reflectors, lighting rigs, etc.

[smeggy]

The basic props are easy enough to make but we'll have to wait for the final materials in Studio before we can make them work as they should to get all the correct properties for diffusers and umbrellas, reflectors are plain old diffuse white and Barnies are normally matt black so that's simple enough. But yes, I really do think that a standard set of photographic props would be universally helpful as they are in the real world.

 

I'm currently testing a 'ring flash' used for Macro photography to see how well it would work as this is a common item for close-ups. I have it linked to the camers so it's always correctly oriented as the camera moves. It's interesting translating real to virtual in new ways

[Ernest Burden III]

the SketchUp library is this:

 

[smeggy]

That's a cool selection there. We should convert some of those into .obj or .3ds format which most should be able to import and get a set made for each app that Maxwell works with using common material properties on all platforms. That way we can have complete collections zipped up ready for use. If lightbulbs are added to the lamps then they should be good to go.

[ivox3]

I've not tried it much, but since MR is using geometry as emitters .....maybe using nano sized emitters could provide some solution. .....but i suppose your probably going to have some pretty sharp shadows with that method. Although, that coupled with skydome or similar could help to counter that.

 

 

Dunno, ......maybe it's a stupid thought. But i was thinking about that post Micha started where he was playing a game "Where is the Emitter?" and he used a nano sized emitter hidden i guess basically in plain sight. Clever.

[efilana]

Guys, I haven't read this thread thoroughly and maybe I you already figured it out, but there is a very easy way to make an emitter invisible and hide its reflection, too! You select object - object properties, Maxwell Object Properties - and there you'll find all those check boxes. Explore them!

[ivox3]

Yeah ... way back in 2005, .. we didn't have that option. lol...

[efilana]

I know, right?

I realized something was not quite right when I already posted my reply. Didn't know they would store such old threads.

I myself was looking for some answers, so thought I could help out

[ivox3]

It's not a problem ... it happens, ..it's funny. thanks..

 

Maybe it's good that you mentioned it though, ... because that Maxwell Object Properties Box is probably overlooked by new users -- because they're probably looking for those options in the main plug-in windows.

[efilana]

It is possible. I myself didn't use it in my first rendering