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Hi,
I know that it's possible to batch change multilight data using the mxi batch process function,
But I'm wondering if i can animate the strength of various emitters inside c4d itself? (planes with maxwell emitter materials applied)?

You can do that if you use a Cinema material, and animate the Luminance channel.

thanks for the quick reply.
I tried that but maxwell came up with the error no lights in the scene, so nothing can be rendered, which kinda makes sense to me. I've put in some c4d area lights instead which i should be able to animate too, but I'm not used to using lights to light a scene, so I'm wondering if anyone can advise what the best way to mimic a maxwell emmiter plane in c4d would be? would it be an area light with photometrics enabled?

cheers

You can use Cinema area lights and such, but I would not prefer to do it that way. These steps should work fine:

1. make a plane
2. make a Cinema material
3. enable its Luminance channel
4. apply it to the plane
5. render

So please confirm that you are able to use these steps, then we can go on to figure out why there is a problem in the scene you are working with.

Thanks for the quick reply.
That's correct, and how I tried it. (i also tried turning on the GI area light checkbox in the illumination settings)
i did turn off the colour channel though. i assume that's not needed?.

other than that in my maxwell environment setting i have "none" selected in type.

The Color channel should not be required, but actually, I find that you have uncovered a bug here -- try enabling the Color channel (it won't be used) and see if that helps.

yep that did it. it's working now. thanks for the help. (should have thought to try that myself...)

Sorry i spoke too soon.
It seems i can't adjust the strength of the emitter materials. whether the brightness in the luminance panel is set to 1% or 1000% the emitter in maxwell looks the same. (i can adjust them in maxwell with multilight, but can't animate them in c4d as all the values come out the same.)
am i using the wrong c4d setting to adjust the emitter strength?

Sorry, I forgot that I was using newer code than you; please try version 2.6.11, linked here.