Self Illumination

The Self Illumination Render Element stores the illumination of any self-illuminated materials in the scene.

Overview

The Self Illumination Render Element isolates self-illuminated materials, including V-Ray Mesh Lights, objects with the VRayLightMtl, and any objects with Self-Illumination enabled in their V-Ray material. This render element is useful for brightening or color-correcting self-illuminated materials in the final composite.

For example, the material VRayMtl has a parameter for self-illumination. If this parameter is set to a non-black color value, this render element will show the results of the self-illumination.

UI Path: ||Display Render Settings button|| > Render Elements tab > Self Illumination

Attributes

The parameters for this render element appear in the Attribute Editor under Extra V-Ray Attributes.

Enabled – When enabled, the render element appears in the V-Ray frame buffer.

Deep output – Specifies whether to include this render element in deep images.

Filename suffix – The text added to the end of the rendered file, when saved as a separate file (e.g. myrender.selfIllum.vrimg).

Apply color mapping – Applies the color mapping options specified in the Color Management rollout of the VRay tab in the Render Settings window to this render element. This option is enabled by default.

Denoise – Enables the render element's denoising, provided the Denoiser render element is present.

Common uses

The Self Illumination Render Element is useful for changing the appearance of self-illuminated surfaces after rendering in compositing or image editing software. Below are two examples of its use.

Self Illumination Render Element

Original Beauty Composite

Self Illumination Render Element with added glow

Tinted Self Illumination Render Element with added glow

Self Illumination with added glow

Color of self-illuminated surface changed in composite

Compositing Formula

vrayRE_Self_Illumination + Beauty = Final Image

Notes

• This element contains only the light geometry itself, not the light emitted from it. Lighting information is contained in the Lighting Render Elements.