Light from inside a glass cube

Steel Rat

So, I put a crystal object inside a "glass" cube, and am trying to get it to emit light through the cube container, but it doesn't seem to work. 

Light doesn't seem to be getting out of the cube at all.

I've tried mesh lights (Ghost Light Kit 3 simple mesh light) cranked up to 10,000,000 luminance, and a point light cranked up as well.

I've also tried changing the refraction index all the way down to 1, but there is no change as to whether light will come out.

Is there something obvious I'm missing? Using Iray.

NorthOf45

Max Path Length? Under Render Settings->Optimization. Make sure it is something like 3 to 5 or more (enough to bounce and bend a few times), or -1 to start (Iray takes what it can/wants/needs). It's a performance vs. quality balance. If you are using one of the glass presets, the other settings should be okay. Try the Caustic Sampler ON, to get more realistic effects outside the cube.

IceCrMn

Works for me.

Render settings left at defualts.

Surface settings shown in screen shots below.

Test render is preview render "Save last draw".

Doing a full render that's working out just fine also.Though it's taking awhile to render out all the noise and fireflies because the light from inside the glass box is the only light and it's passing through the "glass".

Faeryl Womyn

Steel Rat said:

So, I put a crystal object inside a "glass" cube, and am trying to get it to emit light through the cube container, but it doesn't seem to work. 

Light doesn't seem to be getting out of the cube at all.

I've tried mesh lights (Ghost Light Kit 3 simple mesh light) cranked up to 10,000,000 luminance, and a point light cranked up as well.

I've also tried changing the refraction index all the way down to 1, but there is no change as to whether light will come out.

Is there something obvious I'm missing? Using Iray.

I'm not sure if this applies in this case, I'm am by not means an expert on iRay... Have you done a render with each change you made to make sure it's showing up or not, or just using the preview window. With some things, they don't show in the preview, but they do show up in the render. 

Fishtales

IceCrMn said:

Doing a full render that's working out just fine also.Though it's taking awhile to render out all the noise and fireflies because the light from inside the glass box is the only light and it's passing through the "glass".

Try turning the Glossiness off for the glass box. all that light bouncing from mirror to mirror inside will slow the render. I tried it both ways and it makes a difference.

Steel Rat

Thanks for the replies, folks.

I ended up just using a plain surface with the opacity cutout turned down to almost zero. Then it works, but I obviously don't get any glass reflection.

I'm trying some of the suggestions above to see what my results are.

IceCrMn - Are you using a glass shader on the cube?

 

Steel Rat

Well, I started over, and don't know what I did differently, but it's working as expected this time.