OTOY Forums

I'm wondering if there's a way in Octane to create a material which will self-illuminate, but won't illuminate other objects around it?

The use case: I'm creating a comic-style project which has the lettering and speech as actual 3D objects inside the world. I want them to cast shadows and be physically present, but obviously I also want the text to be readable, even when the lighting's low. At the same time, I don't want the text to illuminate everything else!

Any way to do this?

No this is not possible in octane. Your best option (as far as i can tell) is to use as little emission power as you can get away with.

I had a similar need and I made a mix material with diffuse color (white in my case) and same white rgb texture plugged into emmission.

Made the emmissive power really low as suggested and with the diffuse mix it goes pure white casts shadows (does not pick up shadows cause the lights burns them out) BUT emmission is so low it does not light other objects.

BUT it is like having a photographic white card in a scene so if there are reflective surfaces they will pick up the text bubble white and generally add to the lightness of the scene. Not dramatically but you will see the difference if you hide them.

Hope that helps

Peter