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 will show the results of the self-illumination.

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

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 of the V-Ray tab in the Render Setup window 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.

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.

Self Illumination Render Element

Original Beauty Composite

Color of self-illuminated surface changed in composite

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.

Notes

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