VRaySelfIllumination

This page gives information about the Self Illumination Render Element.

Overview

The Self Illumination Render Element stores the illumination of any self-illuminated materials in the scene. It isolates self-illuminated materials, including V-Ray Mesh Lights, objects with the VRayLightMtl, and any objects with Self-Illumination enabled in their V-Ray material. This render element is useful for brightening or color-correcting self-illuminated materials in the final composite.

For example, the material VRayMtl has a parameter for self-illumination. If this parameter is set to a non-black color value, this render element shows the results of the self-illumination.



UI Path: ||Render Setup window|| > Render Elements tab > Add button > VRaySelfIllumination

images/download/attachments/60100418/Max2020_VRay5_RenderElements_UIpath.png

images/download/attachments/60100418/LetterBScene.VRaySelfIllumination.png

Parameters

This render element is enabled through the Render Elements tab of the Render Setup window in 3ds Max and displays its parameters in a rollout at the bottom of the window:

VRayVFB – When enabled, the render element appears in the V-Ray frame buffer.

Deep output – Specifies whether to include this render element in deep images.

Color mapping – Applies the color mapping options specified in the Color mapping rollout (Render Setup window > V-Ray tab) to this render element. This option is enabled by default.

Multiplier – Sets the overall intensity of the render element, where 1.0 is the standard multiplier.

Denoise – Specifies whether to denoise this render element.

images/download/attachments/60100418/Max2020_VRay5_VRaySelfIllumination_parameters.png

Common Uses

The Self Illumination Render Element is useful for changing the appearance of self-illuminated surfaces after rendering in compositing or image editing software. Below are two examples of its use.

images/download/attachments/60100418/LetterBScene.VRaySelfIllumination.png
Self Illumination Render Element

images/download/attachments/60100418/SelfIllum.RGB_color.png
Original Beauty Composite

images/download/attachments/60100418/SelfIllum_blue.png
Color of self-illuminated surface changed in composite

images/download/attachments/60100418/SelfIllum_reduced.png
Intensity of self-illuminated surface reduced in composite

Compositing Formula

The VRaySelfIllumination Render Element is added to the Beauty render to form the final image.


images/download/attachments/60100418/VRaySelfIllumination_Graph_00000.png

Notes

  • This element contains only the light geometry itself, not the light emitted from it. Lighting information is contained in the Lighting Render Elements.