how to make geometry light in Octane or export from SI?

[DanielKim3d]

Hi

I'm just new user of Octane with Softimage, and have a question here.
What I like to try is making geometry light, for example, using constant shader in SI, and use it as final gathering light source.
Is there a way to do it in Octane render?

Cheers
Daniel

[face]

The constant shaders doesn´t work with Octane, only phong. But the settings in the shader makes the difference.
Outgoing from the standard settings, a specular decay < 1 or a reflectivity color of 0,0,0 gives you a diffuse material.
For a specular material, the transparency color must be different as 0,0,0 and the scale must be different as 1.
All other settings as above, gives you a glossy material.

Now two options to setup lightsources.
The first is to use a light as lightsource. For that you must only switch on the "Area Light" checkbox in the light ppg. Then you can choose the Geometry you want from the pull down menu.
All without object and user will work. You can also use the scale and rotation values from "Area Transformation" in the light ppg.
In the exporter, there is an option in the "Misc" tab, where you can enable the export of area lights as geometry. Normal this option is on as default.
The lightsources will become a diffuse material as default in Octane. This material will have the name of the light shader + the name of the light.
E.g. soft_light.light or mia_portal_light.light5.

The second option is to use a geometry as lightsource. Choose the geometry you want and give it a new phong material. Switch the specular decay to 0. This gives you a diffuse material in Octane.

For both versions, you must set in Octane under the material, the null emission to blackbody or texture emission.
When you have some lights with the same settings, you can add a diffuse material node and plug it in every slot of the meshnode where a light is.
When you use IES profiles, the rotation must be set in Octane. The obj-format can´t handle this.

Hope this helps...

face

[adrencg]

I highly recommend watching this guy's videos...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tedj2lEKvuE

[DanielKim3d]

Thanks guys. I will try that, and am watching the movie on youtube now
But....... my question is why Octane develop team doesn't make it easier? I guess they could make this with just few click....
I am not sure it's only my thought but Octane render still need a lot improved interface....