How do you hide a mesh light?

[kenne150]

I've asked this question before, but did not get the answer I needed. I have 2 questions. First, how do you hide mesh lights from a render? I have a scene with several mesh lights. I literally hid everything in my outliner. I see nothing in viewport except for the one object I want to render. When I render, the mesh lights are still rendering, even though they're hidden. I tried turn the visibility off of one, and it's still in the render, it's just a black shape, lol. Does anyone know the trick to hiding them? I don't want to delete it, I just need to do a quick render of a background plane.

second. if I decide I don't want said object to be a mesh light, how do I disconnect it and retain the original mesh? If I delete the mesh light, it delete's everything. I'm not sure what happens to the original mesh once it's turned into a light, but I've never been able to access it again. This is why I rarely used them.

One more thing, I've never been able to freeze transformations, or center pivot a mesh light. If I do, the lights randomly move to a new place. Is this normal? This doesn't happen to anything else when I try to freeze transformations, delete history, or center pivot. Just mesh lights. I hate them, lol. thanks

Please help? Thank you. 

[damaggio]

Check the Arnold and Maya documentation 

[kenne150]

In these forums? I read all the related questions in the Maya community forums pertaining to hiding mesh lights. There were just a couple. Two were from me. The others were about mesh lights, but not hiding them. None of them had information on hiding a mesh light. I can hide all other lights, just not the mesh light.

I did a random Google search, the hits on "hiding mesh lights in Maya" lead me to these forums. It's a vicious circle. 

I also read this https://docs.arnoldrenderer.com/display/a5AFMUG/Ai+Mesh+Light , which did not cover hiding the lights. I'm not sure where else to look. 

[damaggio]

The mesh light under its attributes should have a hiding setting, just like Vray has.look for invisible maybe.

[damaggio]

Try disable mesh light, it’s written right there in the documentation and a sample image

[kenne150]

@damaggio I finally figured it out. Not only did I have to untick the "light visibility" box, but I also had to slide to specularity slider to zero. Even when the light was off, it was still reflecting on shiny objects in the scene. They are picky little boogers for sure. I've never had this much issue hiding a light, lol. 

I'm just having issues with Maya all around. My Arnold renderer completely quit working a few days a go. I finally had to uninstall, and reinstall multiple times. While it currently works, it certainly has some issues. I was previously rendering shots in the same scene at about 3.5 hours. After the reinstall, I just used the same render setting as I previous did , and I just rendered a shot I had also rendered before the re-install.... at 13.65 hours! I personally have never had a render over 4 hours in my life, uhg. I'm not sure what's going on, but I'm about ready to pull my hair out at this point. 😕 I appreciate your help though, thanks. 🙂 

[damaggio · Accepted solution]

That's great  you got it working again, sometimes it can be daunting learning a complex software that's whey we encourage enrolling in a professional 3D course , there are many online schools now with great programs for Film and video game careers.

[kenne150]

I actually have a BS in 3D Animation/Graphic Arts. I'm disappointed in the schools lack of instruction on things that seem to be industry standard. I thought I would be more prepared to work upon graduation than I am. So I just trying to self learn at this point. Too many student loans 😕 

[halley1991]

It's in the aiAreaLightShape>Visibility>Camera=0