Mesh Light

This page offers information about the Mesh Light in Chaos Vantage.

Overview

The Mesh Light is the representation of the V-Ray Mesh Light in Chaos Vantage. The Mesh Light can only be imported with a .vrscene file.

You can use the right mouse button click to reset the parameters numeric values to defaults.

Lights that have [G] in front of their name are grouped and share properties. Changing any value will be instanced in all the grouped lights. You can ungroup lights by clicking the checkbox in front of "Grouped with ## other lights".

Listed parameters can be filtered by using the Compact, Basic, and Advanced buttons.

Parameters

Enabled – Turns on and off the mesh light.

Color – Changes the color of the mesh light. See the Color example below.

Intensity – Specifies the intensity of the mesh light's brightness. See the Intensity example below.

When importing Mesh Lights from a .vrscene file, the Intensity parameter may appear as Luminous power, Luminance, Radiant power or Radiance, depending on the unit type specified in the host application.

Invisible – When enabled, makes the light invisible, both to the camera and to reflections. This is useful to prevent bright speckles on glossy surfaces where a ray with low probability hits the extremely bright sphere. See the Invisible example below.

Double-sided – Specifies whether the light illuminates from both sides.

Shadows – When enabled (the default), the light casts shadows. Turn this option off to disable shadow casting for the light. The value moves the shadow toward or away from the shadow-casting object(s). Higher values move the shadow toward the object(s), while lower values move it away. If this value is too extreme, shadows can "leak" through places they shouldn't or "detach" from an object. Other effects from extreme values include Moire patterns, out-of-place dark areas on surfaces, and shadows not appearing at all in the rendering. See the Shadows example below.

Affect diffuse – Determines whether the light affects the diffuse portion of the materials. The value controls the light's contribution to the diffuse portion of the materials. See the Affect Diffuse example below.

Affect specular – Determines whether the light affects the specular portion of the materials. The value controls the light's contribution to specular reflections. See the Affect Specular example below.

Affect reflections – Specifies whether the light source appears in reflections.

Use global mult. - When enabled, uses the Enable Lights value (Render tab > Advanced mode > Lighting rollout) as a multiplier to Intensity value. When disabled, the light is independent from the global multiplier.

Simple portal – When enabled, the Rect light is treated as a portal and only uses colors from the environment map and not from any scene objects behind the portal.

Examples

The following examples demonstrate the effect that individual Mesh Light parameters have on the scene. Click on any image to view it at a higher resolution.