Octane Standalone Documentation

A Mesh Emitter is a polygon object that emits light into a scene (figure 1). This is possible by applying a Diffuse, Universal, or Standard Surface material to a mesh object, and then connecting a Black Body or Texture emission node to the material's Emission pin.

Figure 1: A light-emitting Diffuse material

To use a mesh as a light source, apply a Diffuse, Universal, or Standard Surface material to the surface, then connect an Emission node to the Emission pin. There are two types of Emissions:

• Black Body Emission - Uses Color Temperature (in Kelvin) and Power to control the light's color and intensity, respectively.
• Texture Emission - This allows any valid texture type to set the light intensity. This emission type can be used to create interesting effects, such as TV screens, by using an image texture as the source.
• Emission Switch - This node allows for two or more emission nodes to be connected to an emission input pin.

The emission types can be accessed by right-clicking in the Node Graph Editor and navigating to the Emission category (figure 2).

Figure 2: Selecting an Emission node from the Node Graph Editor