Octane Lights
note
Currently, LightWave light sources are not compatible with Octane. Users must always work with Octane lights to set up Octane scene lighting.
Octane Light Parameters
The Octane custom light adds a set of settings to control the Octane light emitter that this custom light add to the Octane scene at render time.
Light Shape: Set the shape of the light emitter
Light Type: Sets the type of light.
- Light Types
Blackbody - The Blackbody Emission type uses Colour Temperature (in Kelvin) and Power to control the colour and intensity of the light.
LW Color Texture If the texture type is set to “LW Color/Texture“, user can select any texture map available inside the LightWave or from any file to be used as light emitter. HDRI maps are also valid and invaluable to light scenes. Using the same settings, it is also possible to select an IES file, that is going to be used as a light map to modulate light emissions using the IES data.
Light Portal - Portals are a technique to help the render kernel find important light sources. In interior renderings with windows, it is challenging for the path tracer to find light from the outside environment and optimally render the scene. Portals are planes that are added to the scene in the host modeling program that are used by OctaneRender™ to more efficiently render the scene. When using Portals, all openings must be covered with a portal. It will not work if only one window has a portal over it when all other windows do not have a portal over them. The normals on the Portal object MUST be pointed into the scene, or the render kernel will not use it properly. Currently, portals cannot be placed in openings which are not open, e.g. a window with a portal cannot contain glass at this time. In some complex scenes and situations, portals might slow down the render, so a bit of experimentation with/without should be done.
NOTE: Portals only apply to pathtracing type kernels, e.g. pathtracing, photon and PMC.
It is best to try to use the least amount of geometry for portals, e.g. only a few simple rectangular planes are best, the more geometry your portals contain, the slower the engine might become. Sometimes it is better to place one large portal over many small windows due to the above. It's ok to make a portal larger than the opening, just make sure it closes/covers all opening(s). A portal which is unnecessarily large will end up slowing down the efficiency, as some of the rays through the covered parts of the portal will not go outside the space. Portals, when defined with the portal material, will not show up in your render, e.g. this will be invisible geometry.
Toon Directional Light - Use the Toon Directional light with Toon materials for effective work, since it was developed for this Material type. This adds a Directional light to the scene, much like the native direct light in LightWave, and is suitable for global lighting. Rotation is important, and position does not have any effect on the illumination. The Size In Viewport and Power attributes have no effect on the light source due to the stylistic nature of toon shading. The Texture attribute controls the light source's overall brightness. You can control this by the slider value, or by using a Texture map.
Toon Point Light - The Toon Point light is designed to work just with Toon materials. This adds a Point light to the scene, much like the native Point light in LightWave. Position is important, and rotation does not have any effect on the illumination, as this light source type illuminates in all directions. The Size In Viewport and Power attributes have no effect on the light source due to the stylistic nature of Toon shading. The Texture attribute controls the light source's overall brightness. You can control this with the slider value, or by using a Texture map.
Spectron Light
By selecting 'Spectron Light' as your light type, you can open the Spectron Light Node Editor to set the Volumetric Spotlight parameters for rendering.
Temperature: The temperature (in K) of the light emission.
Power: This is the wattage of the light source. Each light in the scene should be set to its real world wattage. For example, a desk lamp could be set to 25 watts, a ceiling lamp to 100 watts, and an LED light to 0.25 watts. This setting should not be used to balance the lighting power of the scene.
Efficiency: This setting is used to set the efficiency of the light source. No light is 100% efficient at delivering the power at the specified wattage (a 100 watt light bulb does not actually deliver 100 watts of light.) The efficiency setting can be used to enter the real-world values. These values can be used to create very realistic light settings. For example, a standard 100-watt incandescent bulb would only be approximately 2.0% efficient whereas a 25-watt compact fluorescent light will be 10% efficient. These will both produce around the same quantity of light in real life.
Sampling Rate: control how much weight is given to the emitter when picking an emitter to sample. This allows you to choose which light sources will receive more samples. In the above example, you can increase the rate for the spotlights, so they get sampled adequately.
Shape Opacity: This will control the opacity of the light shape (0 - 1.0)
Unseen by camera: This will make the light shape invisible to the camera.
Shape Cast Shadow: Lets light sources cast light and shadows on Diffuse surfaces. To enable this option, include the Emitter with the Direct Light calculation (the Sampling Rate value must be greater than 0). This option is enabled by default.
Double Sided: Determines whether a light is double-sided and thus emits rays from both sides of the shape.
Transparent Emission: Lets light sources cast illumination on Diffuse objects, even if the light source is on Transparent material.
Surface Brightness: Enabling this option will cause emitters to keep the surface brightness constant independent of the emitter surface area, i.e. the total emitted power will be dependent on the emitter surface area. The scaling is done in a way that a texture emitter will produce the same colour in the rendering (if the diffuse channel is black), when the camera response curve is set to “Linear/off”, exposure to 1, gamma to 2.2 and vignette to 0. Disabling the option will keep the total emission power constant, i.e. the surface brightness will become dependent on the emitter surface area.
