Hi, is there any way to light a scene with particles with FG + self illuminate material so that the particles themselves would be invisible? I have tried to disable visible to camera from particle properties but that doesnt help. Im doing fireworks scene where wireworks light up a lake, and im using “oversized” spherical particles to get better effect. I thought I can disable particles from render, and render them from separate pass with “normal size” shape facing on. Any ideas how to do this? Thanks

Use instance geometry and instance Light ;) I duno if it will let u do that but maybe.. or create 0.000000000001 size sphere, alig&link to it light and make it group and then try to instance it :)

ps or just instance any geometry and untick visible in camera properties for that geometry maybe? :)

What kind of particles are you using? If you’re using superspray, you should be able to disable visible to camera in the object properties and keep the FG light. If you’re using pflow, you’ll have to go to the particle view and select either the pf source or a specific event, right-click and go to properties. There you can uncheck visible to camera and it will keep the FG light.

3ds Max 2009 SP1, 2010 SP1
Maya 2012
Windows 7 Professional 64-bit
Dual Intel Xeon E5520, 6 GB Ram
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 OC