[fv]

I made a model with flipped or mirrored emitter planes and found in Maxwell that the originals where alright but the flipped ones the surfaces where reversed and so did not work. I haven't tried this but I thought of this workaround by making al my emitters cut in half with surfaces directing both ways using a component that restricts light going only in one direction.

Anyone experienced the same problem.

I had very good experiences with making spotlights with using a cilinder with an emitter surface at the bottom and the inside of the cilinder black. This way I get a very nice typical spotlight I can adjust by moving the emitter plane up and down in the cilinder. I use this cilinder in all sort of light fixtures.

[Tim Ellis]

When you mirror an object, the face normals are inverted.

In Studio flip the face normals in that object's parameter rollout.

Hope this helps,


Tim.

[fv]

ok, could work, thanks, will try it. Still, objects from Sketchup are gathered under the materials so flipping the object with all emitters will just mirror them again and so the end result will be the inverse of the problem. I will try it though but with little hope. Anyhow thanks a lot. Strange is that all other materials import in Studio just fine without this problem. Probably because both faces are defined as the appropriate texture and emitters can not being single sided faces for the direction of the sunlight.

[Fernando Tella]

I've found the same problem in 3dsmax. The most strange thing is that when the geometry is mirrored the emitter works in the opposite way of the normal. The normal is ok, but the emitter direction does not match the normal.

[fv]

in my case the normals are just flipped and I can not flip them all in one direction.

i understand the emitters depend on way the normals are directed, different from textured materials that are getting their texture from either side.

its a pity while working with components this limits the use of emitters in components. you can of course explode the components with emitters but it a bit of a hassle. Let call these flipping normals a bug on the wishlist to be fixed.

workaround is just keeping emitters planes cut in half directing both ways. this will work when you use the bottom of a box as an emitter.