This page provides information about the Direct Light in V-Ray for Cinema 4D.
Overview
The V-Ray Direct Light casts parallel light rays in a specified direction.
UI Path: ||V-Ray|| > Lights > Legacy Lights > Direct Light
General
Enabled – Turns the light on and off.
Color – Determines the color of the light.
Intensity – A multiplier for the strength of the light. The Intensity units are determined by the Units parameter.
Units – Specifies the light units. Using the correct units is essential when using the V-Ray Physical Camera. The light automatically takes the scene's unit scale into consideration to produce the correct result for the scale you are working with. The possible values are:
Default – The color and multiplier directly determine the visible color of the light without any conversion. The light surface appears with the given color in the final image when seen directly by the camera (assuming there is no color mapping involved).
Lumens – Total emitted visible light power measured in lumens. When this setting is used, the intensity of the light does not depend on its size. A typical 100W electric bulb emits about 1500 lumens of light.
Lm/m/m/sr – Visible light surface power measured in lumens per square meter per steradian. When this setting is used, the intensity of the light depends on its size.
Watts – Total emitted visible light power measured in watts. When this setting is used, the intensity of the light does not depend on its size. Keep in mind that this is not the same as the electric power consumed by a light bulb for example. A typical 100W light bulb only emits between 2 and 3 watts as visible light.
W/m/m/sr – Visible light surface power measured in watts per square meter per steradian. When this setting is used, the intensity of the light depends on its size.
Options
Affect Diffuse – Determines whether the light affects the diffuse properties of the materials.
Affect Specular – Determines whether light affects the specular of the materials. This means glossy reflections.
Affect Atmospherics – Determines whether the light influences the atmospheric effects in the scene.
Diffuse Contribution – When Affect Diffuse is enabled, specifies a multiplier for the effect of the light on the diffuse component.
Specular Contribution – When Affect Specular is enabled, specifies a multiplier for the effect of the light on the specular component.
Atmospheric Contribution – When Affect Atmospherics is enabled, this value determines the amount of involvement.
Area Speculars – When enabled, the highlights match the shape of the light. When disabled, highlights are always calculated as if affected by a point light.
Cut-off Threshold – Specifies a threshold for the light intensity below which the light is not computed. This can be useful in scenes with many lights, where you want to limit the effect of the lights to some distance around them. Larger values cut away more of the light; lower values make the light range larger. When this value is 0.0, the light is calculated for all surfaces.
LPE Label – Allows a label to be assigned, which can be used to reference the light in a Light Path Expression. This is especially useful when working with the Light Select render element to evaluate custom light contribution in the scene.
Photon emission
Caustics Subdivs – Only used when calculating Caustics. Lower values mean more noisy results but render faster. Higher values produce smoother results but take more time.
Caustics Multiplier – This value is a multiplier for the generated caustics by the selected object. Note that this multiplier is cumulative - it does not override the multiplier in the Caustics render settings rollout section.
Project
Project is used to create a list of objects that can be excluded (or included) from the light's effects.
Mode – Specifies whether the objects in the list are considered Included or Excluded from the light's effects.
Objects – Creates a list of objects to be excluded or included. When an object is added to the list, the icons appear, which determine how the light affects the object. The icon controls whether the emitted light affects the object. The icon controls whether the shadows caused by the light affect the object. The determines whether the object's children are affected.