Option to Activate Emmisive Objects/Layers in Lights Panel?

since emissive materials are a light source, for better quicker handling would it be possible to add these to the lights panel?

@nathanletwory any thoughts?

I’m not sure if that’ll work. When an emissive material has the strength set to 0 or its emission color set to black it seizes to be an emissive material, and as such any object with that material no longer functions as a lighting source. At least that is how it currently is set up.

With how that detection has been implemented at the moment I’m not sure how that could work in a useful way in the lights panel.

Essentially all PBR materials would have to be in there in addition to the emission material instances, and that gets cumbersome - a PBR material set up to be leaves shouldn’t show up, but how are we to know that it isn’t a potential light source?

how do other light sources show up there? do they have an id as an object and then get put into that table automatically? i assume emissive materials probably also have something like an id, if these automatically register in the lights panel either the intensity just like other light sources could directly be adjusted and toggled there

if somebody wishes to do that and wonders why he has no control then so be it, that should not add further implications either way i assume. or what do black light sources do? even if they are black holes (i doubt they are though a funny idea maybe) and actively suck in the light instead of emitting some it would be loss of energy in that region.

sorry if all that sounds too creative but i really imagine that this could step up the light game a lot since emissive materials is something that people do use very often.

I rather meant what should happen when a PBR material that is emissive and were to show up in the lights panel and gets turned off?

Emission color black (and no active texture) translates to: not an emissive material. That is how in a PBR material we know it is not an emission material.

Also strength 0.0 → not an emission material.

In those cases Rhino automatically enables the defalut camera (left-shoulder camera-based light).

Would it perhaps work such that once a material has had its emission set it’d show up in the lights panel and then always be there? That way toggling emissiveness could work I think.

There is a light manager concept in the SDK, but it is not much explored. But it might be a way to get some sort of control over materials that are made emissive. But for now I’m just trying to think of how this could work.

Can’t say I have seen terribly many user files with those in as light sources, not sure if it is a correct generalization.

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as long as it is identified as emissive to keep control i would leave all that in the lights panel no matter which colour or intensity.

the only way it should vanish there is if the material gets deleted

fine with me?

i dont know the technical implications, but best would be imho if once the material is deleted it should vanish there either, just like any other light source.

i really love emissive light sources, making bulbs with glowing wire, what could be more realistic :slight_smile: