Emitters and Power

[treddie]

Hi.

Let's say I have one emitter, and I give it a material with an emitter power of 100. Then let's say I have ten emitters, but which were made into one object before importing it into Octane. Applying the same material, do each of the ten emitters in the object now emit power = 10, or power = 100?

[roeland]

It depends:

• If the 10 emitters are assigned to the same material entry on the mesh (i.e. there's only one material pin for them) then the power is divided between the objects. Octane doesn't try to figure out if the polygons with that material are one single object or a bunch of smaller objects.
• Assigning separate material entries on the mesh will mean each entry will have the 100W of power. It doesn't matter if the same material node is connected to these pins, or if there are separate nodes for each emitter.
• If you add emitters on scaled meshes, the scaling of the meshes will influence the power: a smaller mesh will emit less light. This scaling is proportional to the area of the mesh.

--
Roeland

[treddie]

Thank you, Roeland. It all makes perfect sense to me now.