Patchwork 3D Community 2021.1 X5

Surfaces as light sources

It is possible to use a surface as a light source by selecting a material to be used as a source and assigning that material to the surface.

All of the standard and multi-layer materials in the Matter material library can be selected as light sources. This selection is made from the Iray settings editor.

Materials are selected simultaneously in the Iray settings editor and in the Matter library; you can therefore select the material in whichever interface is more convenient.

To function as a light source, the emitting materials must have an illumination intensity greater than 1. For a multilayer material, this is the illumination of the illumination layer. This parameter can be set in the Materials editor.

Note

The renders of materials used as light sources can be noticeably different between Patchwork 3D and Iray.

Note

MultiLayer Materials: Iray does not support infinite layers. Materials conflicting with the Iray limit will appear in orange in the list, and a warning is printed in the log. During rendering, Iray will automatically simplify the conflicting material.

Override Patchwork 3D material

Certain material settings can be overridden by Iray-specific settings. The available settings vary with the type of material.

To enable the override settings in Iray, click the Materials tab from the Iray settings editor and select among the following parameters:

  • Any Patchwork 3D material can be used by Iray as a matte material.

  • You can also override the selected material with other materials from the Material Library of the database.