2.3 emitter primer

[thomasbosley]

I was hoping there was a place to go where I could get some formalized information about how all the new features in 2.3 work. I've been scanning the forums and the thing that seems to be missing is broad information. There is a lot of info about specific things but concepts are largely absent. I understand why this is (I would rather the team was working on software instead of telling the 90th person they need cuda 3.0 instead of 3.1, even if that person is me). So if someone in the know would help fill in the blanks and correct any falsehoods that would be great.

"Area Lights"

I can find no mention or mechanism for the use of these in octane. So I am left to assume that they are meshes exported from the 3d program which have had emitters applied to them in octane. So... Is there any way to add light to a scene once it is already in octane, without a mesh from the 3d program? I saw one post that alluded to moving ones area lights around in octane. Is there any way to move a light around, and adjust lighting, while in octane? Or is all positioning said and done once the .obj has been exported?

"Mesh Emitters"

In renders where emitters are pictured people seem to inquire about the number of triangles regularly. What is the effect of the number of faces on the emitter applied to it? Does a single polygon plane emit four times more light if subdivided? Or is it a matter of the resolution of the light being emitted, ie, more faces equals more normal paths for the emitter's light to follow, and therefore more realistic results for a modeled light bulb?

The crux of the matter is that I am working on a scene, an interior which is lit through the windows in the image. I want to maintain the appearance of all natural lighting, but also use lights to give a more even illumination. When pathtracing is on it gets very dark in some places, no matter the preview kernal settings. I have added single polygon planes to the scene with a diffuse material, a texture emission, and an rgb spectrum node to control color. Is this a good way to do it? Is blackbody emission a better option? Is there a performance difference or is color temp the main advantage? The scene renders very slowly. But there is a lot of geometry and textures. Is my lighting effecting my render times adversely, or is that just the reality of pathtracing? Thanks for any help. I'll attach an image of the scene I'm talking about. It was 7 hours rendering with a gtx 470, at 4k, with pathtracing.

Also, what is a emission/texture macro, and when would an emission null be useful?