[Kevin]

Will I be able to eventully link a light to just specific geometry and hide the light's source?

I need to be able to use hair/back lighting on my characters but I only want it to effect the character and not cast a shadow. Plus I wouldn't want to see the floating emmiter running around behind him.

Thanks!

-Kevin

[def4d]

The philosophy of Maxwell is to respect true behaviours of light, so you can't do what you ask

[vkiuru]

The philosophy of Maxwell is to respect true behaviours of light, so you can't do what you ask

... but why should, for example, hiding emitters be excluded? instead of making cool or beautiful faked images i should respect the true behaviours of light? why not take photos instead, then?

[Kevin]

The philosophy of Maxwell is to respect true behaviours of light, so you can't do what you ask

Then Renderman here I come..

It makes no sense to limit a renderer to only the "true" behaviours of light. Respect them and try to let them reach that level, but to limit them is just crazy.

Everyone knows that in art production whats realistic or correct doesn't always look good on the screen.

Anyone who has worked on a movie set knows how much the true behaviours of light can be a friggin pain in the arse and it takes hours to find a way to get a hair light positioned correctly without the light, its shadow or its reflection being noticed from the camera's view or it blowing out objects that we never wanted it to hit anyway so you have to re-arrange the set.. oops but continuity with the other shots.. you get my point.

I want flexibility and realism, it is possible to have both without the pains of doing it the old fasion way.

-Kevin

[Mihai]

I agree this functionality is very useful even with Maxwell. It would also be super cool if we could set an arbitrary cutting plane to hide geometry from the camera but still affect render calculations.

[def4d]

NL wants extreme simplicity for its renderer, today Maxwell gives the more realistic pics, without tweaking again and again...

A lot of people have asked what you're talking about, but they even removed the "low quality", the "bounces number", though we want them back...

It's not the first thread about that, look in the wishlist section