MaterialsV-Ray for Rhino

V-Ray for Rhino

Emissive

This page provides information about the Emissive material in V-Ray for Rhino.

Last updated 1 September 2026

This page provides information about the Emissive material in V-Ray for Rhino.

Overview

The Generic V-Ray material's Emissive preset is generally used for producing self-illuminated surfaces.

UI Paths

||V-Ray Asset Editor|| > Materials (right-click) > Emissive

||V-Ray Asset Editor|| > Create Asset (left-click) > Materials > Emissive

UI Options

The Emissive material settings are organized in Basic and Advanced modes. Switch the mode from the toggle button under the Preview Swatch or globally from the Configuration rollout of the Settings tab.

The Add Layer and Add Attribute buttons are provided for some V-Ray materials, including Emissive. For more information, see the Add Attribute and Add Layer sections.

The context menu of the Color slot provides options to Copy and Paste, as well as to Reset the color.

A Reset option is provided in the context menu of each Number Slider.

Emissive

Some options are available only in Advanced mode.

Color – Specifies the color of the light. A texture can be specified as well. See the Color and Texture examples below for more information.

Intensity – Controls the strength of the light.

Transparency – Specifies the color that is transparent. For this parameter black stands for opaque and white for transparent color. A texture can be specified as well. See the Transparency Texture example below for more information.

Emit On Back Side – When enabled, the object emits light from its back side as well. When disabled, only the front side emits light, and the material renders as black on the back sides. See the Emit On Back Side examples below for more information.

Compensate EV – Used when rendering with the V-Ray Physical Camera. When enabled, the intensity of the material is adjusted to compensate for the camera exposure.

Color *Opacity – When enabled, the color of the light material is multiplied by the opacity texture. Otherwise, the color and opacity act independently (so-called additive transparency).

Example: Color and Texture, Intensity, Emit On Back Side

Here are some examples showing the difference in Intensity, the Emit On Back Side turned on and off and using an image in the Color Texture slot. Click on an image to enlarge it.

Intensity

= 1

Color

= White

Emit On Back Side

= Off

Intensity

= 5

Color

= White

Emit On Back Side

= Off

Intensity

= 1

Color

= White

Emit On Back Side

= On

Intensity

= 5

Color

= White

Emit On Back Side

= On

Intensity

= 5

Image loaded in the Color Texture slot.

Emit On Back Side

= on

Example: Transparency Texture On/Off

This example shows the usage of an image in the Transparency Texture slot. Both renders have the Emit On Back Side function turned on as well. The intensity is set to 10.

emissive_blue_intensity10_emitonbackside_transparencytex_colorbyopacity.jpg

Multipliers

This rollout is available only in Advanced mode.

Mode – Specifies one of the following methods for adjusting textures.

Multiply – Multipliers can be specified to adjust colors and textures.
Blend Amount – Blend amounts can be specified to adjust colors and textures.

Color – Controls the intensity of the Emissive Color (light color).

Intensity – Controls the strength of the light.

Transparency – Controls the intensity of the Transparency Color, which determines the color that is transparent.

Viewport Display

Viewport Texture – The selected texture is displayed in the viewport.

Override Control

Can be Overridden – When enabled, the material can be overridden by the Material Override option in the Settings.

Attributes

The attributes from the following expandable menus are available for the Emissive material.

Translucency

Bump

Contour

The Outline attribute is available only when the engine is set to CPU. It is currently not supported for GPU.

Line Color – Specifies the color of the outlines.

Opacity – Specifies the opacity of the outlines.

Normal Threshold – Determines when lines will be created for parts of the same object with varying surface normals (e.g. at the inside edges of a box). A value of 0.0 means that only 90 degrees or larger angles generate internal lines. Higher values mean that smoother transitions between face normals can also generate a line. Setting this value to 1.0 fills curved objects completely.

Overlap Threshold – Determines when outlines will be created for overlapping parts of the one and the same object. Lower values reduce the internal overlapping lines, while higher values produce more overlapping lines. Setting this value to 1.0 fills curved objects completely.

Width – Specifies the width of the outlines.

Inner Line Control – Enables a separate control for the inner edges.

Inner Line Color – Specifies the color of the inner lines

Inner Width – Specifies the width of the inner lines.

Some of the global parameters have an effect on all materials with the Outline attribute. These parameters are Width Type, Trace Bias, No Inner Edges, Visible in Secondary, and Compensate EV.

Outline

Displacement

This is a legacy attribute that will be removed in the future. Consider using the geometry displacement modifier instead. It can be created as a geometry asset in the Outliner and can be applied to objects in the project. Note that the displacement effect will no longer appear in the Preview Swatch.

Displacement – Enables or disables the displacement effect.

Mode / Map – Specifies the mode in which the displacement is rendered.

2D Displacement – Bases the displacement on a texture map that is known in advance. The displaced surface is rendered as a warped height-field based on that texture map. The actual raytracing of the displaced surface is done in texture space and the result is mapped back into 3D space. The advantage of this method is that it preserves all details in the displacement map. However, it requires the object to have valid texture coordinates. You cannot use this method for 3d procedural textures or other textures that use object or world coordinates. The parameter can take any value.
Normal Displacement – Takes the original surface geometry and subdivides its triangles into smaller sub-triangles, which then are displaced.

Amount – The amount of displacement. A value of 0.0 means the object appears unchanged. Higher values produce a greater displacement effect. This parameter can also take a negative value, in which case the displacement pushes geometry inside the object.

Shift – Specifies a constant, which is added to the displacement map values, effectively shifting the displaced surface up and down along the normals. This can be either positive or negative.

Keep Continuity – When enabled, tries to produce a connected surface, without splits, when there are faces from different smoothing groups and/or material IDs. Note that using material IDs is not a very good way to combine displacement maps since V-Ray cannot always guarantee surface continuity. Use other methods (vertex colors, masks, etc.) to blend different displacement maps.

Resolution – (Available when the Mode/Map is 2D Displacement) Determines the resolution of the displacement texture used by V-Ray. If the texture is a bitmap, it is recommended to match this resolution to the size of the bitmap. For procedural 2D maps, the resolution is determined by the desired quality and detail in the displacement. Note that V-Ray also automatically generates a normal map based on the displacement map in order to compensate for details not captured by the actual displaced surface.

View Dependent – When enabled, Edge length determines the maximum length of a subtriangle edge in pixels. A value of 1.0 means that the longest edge of each subtriangle is about one pixel long when projected on the screen. When disabled, Edge length is the maximum sub-triangle edge length in world units.

Edge Length – Determines the quality of the displacement. Each triangle of the original mesh is subdivided into a number of subtriangles. More subtriangles mean more detail in the displacement, slower rendering times and more RAM usage. Less subtriangles mean less detail, faster rendering and less RAM. The meaning of Edge length depends on the View dependent parameter. The slider's minimum range is set to 0.4. Using lower values is still possible by manually typing them in the input box but it may cause significant render delay.

Max Subdivs – Controls the maximum sub-triangles generated from any triangle of the original mesh when the displacement type is Subdivision. The value is in fact the square root of the maximum number of subtriangles. For example, a value of 256 means that at most 256 x 256 = 65536 subtriangles will be generated for any given original triangle. It is not a good idea to keep this value very high. If you need to use higher values, it will be better to tessellate the original mesh itself into smaller triangles instead. The actual subdivisions for a triangle are rounded up to the nearest power of two (this makes it easier to avoid gaps because of different tessellation on neighboring triangles).

Water Level – Clips the surface geometry in places where the displacement map value is below the specified threshold. This can be used for clip mapping a displacement map value below which geometry will be clipped.

Level Height – Value below which the geometry is clipped.

Materials need to be applied to objects (groups/components) to have working displacement. If various materials are applied to different faces of an object, the displacement from the top-level (group/component) material will be used on all of them. Normal Displacement will take into account the texture size of each different face material, while 2D Displacement will ignore them.

Displacement

Raytrace Properties

SketchUp2023_VRay6.2_Material_Attributes_Raytrace

Override

Material ID

Layers

The Layers available for the Emmisive material are as follows.

VRay Mtl

Emissive

Diffuse Coat

Reflective Coat

Flakes 2

Stochastic Flakes

Notes

You can use the Emissive material as a light source assigned to an object. Increasing the Value of the color will affect the GI solution and will produce more light. Note that overbright colors may look the same as pure white but the GI results will be different.
If you know the photometric power of a self-illuminated object in lumens (e.g. 1700 lm for a 100-watt bulb) you can calculate the multiplier for Emissive material if you divide the lumens by the surface area of the object in meters, provided that the self-illuminated color is pure white.
The direct illumination options currently only work properly if the Emissive material is the only material applied on the object. They will not work if the material is part of a complex material like a Blend material. This restriction will probably be removed in a future release.
The 2D mapping (landscape) method only supports one UV mapping channel.

Overview

UI Paths

UI Options

Emissive

Example: Color and Texture, Intensity, Emit On Back Side

Example: Transparency Texture On/Off

Multipliers

Viewport Display

Override Control

Attributes

Translucency

Translucency

Bump

Bump

Contour

Outline

Displacement

Displacement

Raytrace Properties

Raytrace Properties

Override

Override

Material ID

Material ID

Layers

VRay Mtl

Emissive

Diffuse Coat

Reflective Coat

Flakes 2

Stochastic Flakes

Notes

Related articles

Blend

Bump

Bump Attributes

Car Paint 2

Chaos Scan