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Hello, i need some help with ies lightning:

when using ies light, my emitterplane is black, only the wall/floor are lightened.
but I want to use it as an spotlight with a visible light source.

what do i do wrong here ?

thanks for your help

IES is not actually an emitter in the normal way, it is best to think of them as a record of the light fixtures light projection properties... it is simply a different way to get a "model" of a light source/fixture without actually modeling it.

But the downside is there is no actual emitter to see... so black is normal.

My policy is to only use IES when the lightsouce will be "off camera"... for anything "on camera" I would use regular emitter techniques (either MXI or emitter plane).

Best,
Jason.

The manual says to use a small sphere for your emitter when using IES, not a plane. The emitter needs 360 degrees of normals to emit an IES correctly. Next, the IES emitter object won't always create a visible light source, so you may need to create a glowing "bulb" or "lens".