How to tag objects as light source V6

I am now running rhino v6 and need to tag objects as a light source but I don’t see that as an option in the lights toolbar. help?

The only way to do something like that is with a currently hidden material type called Cycles Emissive - this will work only in the Raytraced view and isn’t necessarily compatible with other view modes or plug-ins.

However, if that is what you are looking for you can use TestShowPrivateContent to enable these hidden materials. In the material editor you’ll see you have the possibility of adding other material types, Cycles Emissive is what you need. Assign this material to the object you want to use as a light. Since this isn’t fully hooked up as an actual light you need to add one light (i.e. PointLight) and set its intensity to 0%. This is necessary to prevent Rhino from adding default camera-based lights.

TubeLight.3dm (200.9 KB)

If this is not what you are looking for could you elaborate on what you are looking for? Intended usage?

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Just trying to simply model things with a back light banner that I have tagged as a decal…

Not sure if I understand from your description what you want. @BrianJ, do you have ideas here?

Also, wondering if there is a way to have a picture created on new material for it to only project forward?

Like this?

If I’m understanding right, making the signs emitters with the texture file as the emissive color should create an effect of them being backlit.

TestPrivateContent isn’t working for me (on 6.4.18100.1591), sorry i can’t make an example.

TestShowPrivateContent, sorry, I typoed. I’ll fix my original reply.

Well shoot, it looks like like images can’t be used as the emitter color right now :man_shrugging:. Another option would be to put a rectangular light directly in front of the object. If that doesn’t work well, photoshop might be the best way to go.

The closest you can come with current system is by checking Self-illumination in the material advanced options. Especially in darker environments it will look illuminated.

SelfIllum.3dm (367.2 KB)

In the test scene I used sub-object selection to assing the custom material to one surface.

I filed this as https://mcneel.myjetbrains.com/youtrack/issue/RH-45658 for future reference.