would it be possible to create area lights picking objects?
Specifically for Windows. I am placing area lights above the window glass to lighten my rooms.
since the glass is always a separate object, I imagine it could be possible to have an area light based on the boundaries of the glass. of course the light could be then manipulated independently.
Additionaly a feature to make the glass object emissive without changing it´s appearance and then point out the direction.
And of course lightmass portals would be a nice thing to have.
Thank you for your suggestion and insight. We will discuss internally how to best approach this topic and possible features that can be implemented.
As for the:
Additionaly a feature to make the glass object emissive without changing it´s appearance and then point out the direction.
You can achieve something like this using as a workaround the following method:
set the emissive property of the glass to true and specify an appropriate intensity (keep in mind that the opacity of the glass will influence how much it emits the light)
check if the illumination has improved using preview, once you’re sure the lightning is good bake the scene
disable the emissive property of the glass - do this after the bake (the lightning will be baked to the lightmap, so as long as you don’t re-bake the scene the effect of the glass emitting light will still be present, but the appearance of the glass won’t be altered, as it won’t be emissive anymore).
Whenever you’ll want to rebake the scene you’ll have to repeat the steps (enable emissive, bake, disable emissive).
Keep in mind however that adding too many light sources may create undesirable effects - it may introduce some noise to the lightmap.