I’m using a combination of GI and FG to light a scene and want to use a self illumination material to create strip lighting around a desk, but it seems when you use GI the self illumination material does’nt have any effect. Is there a way to get round this?

thanks

I’m not sure why it would not be working.  I’ve use self illuminated materials before in combination with GI.  Is there anyway you can post the file?

Chris Robinson
http://www.supercoonstudios.com (Under Development)
3ds Max 2011
Dell Precision 690, Intel Xeon Dual Quads @ 2.66 GHz, Dual NVIDIA Quadro FX4500s, 12 GB RAM, Windonws 7 x64

See this thread and this thread.

Thanks for the quick responses, unfortunately I’m still not having much luck. I’ve tried increasing the FG rays as mentioned in one of the posts but it’s still not showing any illumination.

I’ve attached a quick render of what I’m doing. The red highlighted area needs to have a glow but I just can’t seem to get any results. I’ve used this method before with just FG and it’ worked fine but i need to use GI and FG for this render. I’m basically missing a trick somewhere but being a noob I’m at a loss.

thanks again.

	Attachment

Thanks for the quick responses, unfortunately I’m still not having much luck. I’ve tried increasing the FG rays as mentioned in one of the posts but it’s still not showing any illumination.

The point I’m making in those threads is not to rely on SI with FG to illuminate the scene, it’s a very inefficient method. You need very high (slow) FG settings to get acceptable results. Turn off “Illuminate scene with FG” and use an actual light source at the position of the SI object. It will be both faster and better looking (not often that happens in rendering).

however, I can’t find the documentation on the “Architectural: Self Illuminator”.

Help - Additional Help - mr Arch & Design Vis Shaders.
There is a PDF, the Arch SI shader is called mia light surface in native mr speak. It’s at the end of the document.

Illuminates Scenes with FG is enabled. I have amanged to get some results by turning the multiplier up into the 10’s of thousands.

As desk has a curve in it, what light would be best to use to the top strip?

I may have to check out he light surface shader.

Cheers

As desk has a curve in it, what light would be best to use to the top strip?

A curve, that makes is a bit trickyer. Changing the shape from point to line should suffice for a straight strip light. For a gentle curve, maybe a few lines to make a segmented curve, but multiple shape lights will push the render time up again. Do some testing and see what works.