3ds max to d5 arnold mesh lights

Workflow 3ds Max
1

D5 apparently doesn’t yet recognize Arnold mesh light as a mesh light. It gives you a number of alternatives for that light but “mesh” is not one of them so all the emissive mesh lighting has to be controlled from the emissive material for the mesh object. The result is you kill the arnold mesh light and just tune the emissive material to get emissive lighting in D5. The lesson is, the control you had in max with your mesh light is lost in D5. FWIW

2

Yes, that’s right. D5 currently doesn’t recognize Arnold Mesh Lights as actual mesh lights.

If you need mesh/area lighting in D5:

  1. Recreate the mesh light as a D5 Rect Light / Strip Light directly in D5, this gives you full control over shape, size, and intensity

  2. For complex shapes, use a self-illuminating material on the mesh in D5. It won’t cast realistic shadows like a true mesh light, but it glows and contributes to the scene

  3. If the mesh light shape is simple (rectangle, circle), use D5’s built-in Area Light or Strip Light and match the size/position manually

This is on our team’s radar as a feature improvement. :saluting_face:

3

My mesh in this case is a simple sphere. A Rect light or Strip light won’t give off the requisite global loghting.
I did resort to self illuminating material but as the emissive strength increases, the color of the sphere goes to pure white. I lose the yellow color of the shpere if i want it to emit enough light for the scene.
Placing an area light inside the sphere would work if i could exclude the sphere from being affected by the light or the light being affected by being inside the sphere. Is that possible? I didn’t notice any light or object controls like that. Are they there and i just missed them?