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View Full Version : adding texture to lights in photomertric lights (3ds max)

sinahtml
08-17-2012, 04:47 PM
hi everybody
i have a problem with photometric light in 3ds max.
i have a few hdr images of different lighting equipment like umbrellas and soft-boxes etc... which i use as light texture with a rectangular vray light with no problem, i just add them in the texture part of the light and set the directional parameter to 0, if i set it to 1, the light will act as a projector not a light source...
so how can i recreate this with photometric lights and mentalray? if i add the texture as projection map, it will project the map exactly as it is, i have tried using a self illuminating material, it works but requires a great amount of final gathering to clean up.... so what sould i do?
CHRiTTeR
08-19-2012, 11:23 AM
Why does it need to be a photometric light?
The point of photometric light that you can use measured light distribution and intensity.

If you use a projection map (especially HDR) the resulting intensity and distribution wont be 'correct' anymore. So thats probably why you dont have that option in photometric lights.

Just use an area or directional light instead for such things.
sinahtml
08-19-2012, 08:21 PM
hi, thanks for the reply, and you are right about photometric light, actually i wasn't thinking about what kind of light i am using at that moment, it doesn't matter if it is a standard max light or photometric, area or point or directional, all of them give the same result whit a projection map, here is an example. on the left is a mr area light and on the right is a vray light, the same texture map is assigned to both.
so the question comes to this: how can i achieve this in mentalray?
http://www.pixentral.com/hosted/1Bb3RJXKwmbQGQxhm8rALLXrBjLO13_thumb.jpg (http://www.pixentral.com/show.php?picture=1Bb3RJXKwmbQGQxhm8rALLXrBjLO13)