OTOY Forums

Hi, am I doing wrong?
I can't get an area light invisible behind a specular material, windows or other glass-objects.
Object can be single sided or double, I tried Path Tracing, PMC, Photon Tracing and many options in Visibilty- and Light Settings-Tab of the Area Light Tag (Including "Opacity" in Light Settings as seen in an 2015 post).

Is there any chance to get it invisible, am I doing it wrong?
Thanks alot,
K

From Dino Muhic: This is how you can do it —

Or in 2026.1 you can now create a Trace set on the Light, then on the Glass, apply an Octane Object Tag, and exclude the Light set with only Refractive active, and "Apply to future hits" value sets to "Next hit only": There is a sphere light behind the glass, but is is only visible by all the other objects.

Here is the example scene: ciao,
Beppe

jayroth2020 wrote: Mon Feb 02, 2026 10:54 pm From Dino Muhic: This is how you can do it —

Thanks alot jayroth (and Dino as well ) - that'll do very well!
And the Gradient seems to be not mandatory as far as I see.


Thank you also Beppe, I'll give it a try later on.
Seems to be a bit more complicated in the setup

Just FYI: we only use Dino's workflow. It is fast and easy to remind.
And as far as I remember it was refraction ray only what has to be 0 to get it to work. Maybe wrong, but it was only one of the 2 parameters to be set to 0.

Thanks alot!

Hi,

With Ray Switch, you need to disable both Reflections and Refractions, and it is affecting all refractions and reflections, creating an unrealistic material.

With Trace sets you can be surgical, and remove only the reflection or refraction you don't want.

My two cents.

ciao,
Beppe