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got a scene here with load of emitters. 3 different materials -> 4 different sliders (lights + environment) in Maxwell Render.

Even though all the emitters and the environment are adjustable and the sun is shown in the preview - the sun doesn't show in the render. when going in solo mode for the environment the light es there but not the sun.

when rendering just the environment and the emitter objects disabled the sun shows as supposed.

using Cinema+Plugin

Sorry, but I maybe didn't understand the scenario. Which type of environment (skydome, phys sky, image based) are you using and how is it set up?

I use a hdri on all channels except for illumination. that is set to physical sky and the sun is activated.

Runs fine as long as I use no emitter material. As soon as one or all emitters are enabled the sun is not shown in the render anymore.

(at least on win64, will try it on 32bit in a few...))

I'm not seeing this here...here's my test setup:

- using image based env., all channels enabled except illumination
- disabled image based channels set to use physical sky
- sun enabled
- a sphere with maxwell emitter material assigned
- a cinema point light

The only way I can make the sun disappear is if I enable the image based illumination channel; the emitters in the scene don't make any difference. I can think of one possibility: if you have a cinema light with a sun expression, then it will be used to determine the sun's direction. If you disable that light, then the date/time specified in the scene object will be used; maybe it is set to a date/time where you are not seeing the sun's shadow in this case?

If not, maybe you can send me your scene, or another one that duplicates the behavior.

maybe I have to wait really long but there are still some strange things:

this is the normal render without emitters:


preview and render show the same image


this is the one with emitters (under the roof lines and the preliminary bar in the back of the room):


preview shows the sun while the render shows just a bit of shadow at the top, between the roof

link edited

i only can see the first image (w/o emitters); the 2nd one just says "Image"

now, i see. thx.
the sun is visible in the render too...
but strangely i experiencesd that too, today... i thought it'd have to do with too much emitters and an not well optimized reflicetive materials... so it would just take extremely long to show up nicely, so i interrupted the renders...
but i'm not the only one it seems...

Yes, it looks like the sun is there, but that much calculation time is being given to the emitters when they're activated.

That means it should render a lot longer? Or that the sun will never be displayed?

Well, rendering with the emitters disabled shows that the sun will indeed render fine - it will take longer when the engine also has to calculate the extra light sources. I'd just suggest to make sure the light geometry is optimized.