Blender Tip: Creating Invisible Lights in Cycles

by Jonathan Williamson

In this quick tip for Blender, we look at how to make lights invisible to the camera in the upcoming Cycles render engine. This tip shows two different techniques for creating the invisible lights, one by changing the visibility and one by using a custom node setup with Light Paths.

Cycles manual: http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:2.6/Manual/Render/Engines/Cycles

Introduction to Cycles: http://cgcookie.com/blender/2011/09/16/blender-introduction-to-the-cycles-render-engine/

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Discussion

38 Responses to “Blender Tip: Creating Invisible Lights in Cycles”
  1. jaylen banks
    Posts: 13

    first! :D

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    1
     Oct 20, 2011 at 12:59 pm
  2. Tadd Mencer
    Posts: 14

    NIce tip! I need to try out Cycles. Hopefully my computer can handle it!

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    2
     Oct 20, 2011 at 1:00 pm
  3. Noah Harshberger
    Posts: 25

    Really useful tip. Although, I’m not sure if I’m a fan of the roundabout way cycle’s material editor is set up.

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    3
     Oct 20, 2011 at 1:24 pm
  4. bob anymouse
    Posts: 40

    Great! Have been wondering how to do this!

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    4
     Oct 20, 2011 at 1:37 pm
  5. Gottfried Hofmann
    Posts: 7

    Sweet!

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    5
     Oct 20, 2011 at 3:02 pm
  6. Ryan Summey
    Posts: 36

    I cant wait for cycles going to be awesome. @Jonathanwilliamson in your video about lighting a indoor scene with luxrender is that done the same way with Cycles ? I was messing around and i didn’t see a place for portals.

    Thanks for all the rad work!

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    6
     Oct 20, 2011 at 3:08 pm
  7. s" Ádám
    Posts: 7

    Can you please tell me how I can insert a single vertex in Blender?

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    7
     Oct 20, 2011 at 6:54 pm
    • Jonathan Williamson
      Posts: 2971

      You can insert a single vertex with CTRL + LMB while in Edit Mode.

      -Jonathan

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      7.1
       Oct 20, 2011 at 8:00 pm
      • s" Ádám
        Posts: 7

        Thanks, its actually CTRL + RMB but i wouldnt have tried that without your suggestion. It’s funny because I searched for the term “vertex” in the input configuration tab and this was not listed even there. CTRL + LMB only works for curves.

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        7.1.1
         Oct 21, 2011 at 5:21 am
      • Jonathan Williamson
        Posts: 2971

        Ah ha, you must have set the Selection mouse to be the Left Mouse Button then?

        -Jonathan

        #
         Oct 21, 2011 at 9:25 am
  8. Aaron Symons
    Posts: 59

    When 2.61 is released, I should have plenty of time to get back into Blender on a part-time basis. Works out well, as Cycles will be released with it! :D

    Haven’t played around with Cycles since the very first release, back in the day. Was a pain to re-setup the twenty materials on models, but great! I’m sure it’s much easier now. Especially with the Collada support being worked on as well.

    I think this next year or so is going to be fantastic for Blender. :)

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    8
     Oct 20, 2011 at 11:12 pm
  9. Vicky
    Posts: 276

    Fantastic tut! Love all of your tutorials, so thank you :D

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    9
     Oct 21, 2011 at 3:19 am
  10. Matthew
    Posts: 1

    Hello i bought i got your book on character development recently and it says it comes with a dvd. My mom got it for my birthday and since i cant find the page for the character development book i just posted to your most recent post just wondering if i was suposed to get a dvd?
    I love your book!

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    10
     Oct 21, 2011 at 6:39 am
    • Jonathan Williamson
      Posts: 2971

      Yep a DVD comes with it! The DVD has all the source files and some additional video tutorials that expand on a few of the topics in the book.

      Did your copy not come with the DVD? It should be inside the back cover.

      -Jonathan

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      10.1
       Oct 21, 2011 at 9:23 am
  11. Sean Watters
    Posts: 31

    Did you know that Blender 2.60 came out on the official Blender website today? Not many noticeable changes, but the ones that ARE there are listed on the website. I hope 2.61 comes out soon, because I cant get the Cycles build I got from graphicall.org to work. :(

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    11
     Oct 21, 2011 at 8:45 am
  12. oldman44
    Posts: 43

    Actually it was released 10/19/2011, but no matter.

    According to the site : “Plan is to make a very tight schedule for this, with a bi-monthly release.”

    -OldMan44

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    12
     Oct 21, 2011 at 9:00 am
  13. Greg Zaal
    Posts: 39

    Nice!! Very useful tip Mr Williamson :)
    Cycles is now officially my primary renderer :)

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    13
     Oct 22, 2011 at 5:32 am
  14. Matt
    Posts: 3

    CG Cookie needs to make a Unity cookie, for people who would like to learn unity. I know that there are already seven website types but unity needs to be one of them.

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    14
     Oct 22, 2011 at 10:42 am
    • Jonathan Williamson
      Posts: 2971

      Mark the second week of November down on your calendar ;)

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      14.1
       Oct 22, 2011 at 11:25 am
      • Matt
        Posts: 3

        Ok that’s great! A new Unity cookie! Thanks

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        14.1.1
         Oct 22, 2011 at 2:22 pm
      • bert van den bosch
        Posts: 121

        Yess!!! I’m learning unity for a while!
        This is what I need

        _bert

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        14.1.2
         Oct 25, 2011 at 12:03 pm
      • bert van den bosch
        Posts: 121

        Yess!!! I’m learning unity for a while!
        This is what I need :D

        -Bert

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        14.1.3
         Oct 25, 2011 at 12:04 pm
    • Ryan Summey
      Posts: 36

      RADDDDDDDDDDDD

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      14.2
       Oct 22, 2011 at 1:12 pm
  15. Chris Schultz
    Posts: 26

    Is it possible to create transparent shadows, just like “shadows only” in BI?
    I could really use it in my projects. I was under the impression that it was not yet in Cycles.

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    15
     Oct 22, 2011 at 9:39 pm
  16. bert van den bosch
    Posts: 121

    That was just what I need, I was searching this for a long time ago!
    Thx for this great tut :D

    -Bert

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    16
     Oct 25, 2011 at 12:02 pm
  17. Mark Hawthorn
    Posts: 8

    I’ve only used cycles twice and both times I get very small white and black dots in areas I have also notices this in some of the submission images on the site from other people, is this a bug or is it just cycles?

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    17
     Oct 29, 2011 at 7:57 am
    • Mitch McCollum
      Posts: 17

      Its cycles in your render options there is samples set it to a higher one like 500 is usually pretty good..

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      17.1
       Oct 31, 2011 at 8:42 am
  18. thomas speed
    Posts: 301

    Awesome =)

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    18
     Oct 29, 2011 at 7:04 pm
  19. Mitch McCollum
    Posts: 17

    You know, if you set it to gpu rendering it will render much much faster…

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    19
     Oct 31, 2011 at 8:41 am
    • Donald1
      Posts: 42

      I had that experience as well. Three times faster with GPU setting. :)

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      19.1
       Nov 9, 2011 at 1:12 am
  20. Gary Parkin
    Posts: 109

    WOW! I just tried it out last night. Cycles rocks!
    It “feels” like LUX, but at a higher level. When this takes off, it is going to be really great.
    I’ll post some shots as soon as I get them onto my site.

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    20
     Nov 1, 2011 at 7:00 am
  21. eCarran
    Posts: 1

    Excellent Tip!! By the way, is there any way of avoiding the emitter object’s shadow?

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    21
     Nov 1, 2011 at 2:55 pm
  22. Glen Sumner
    Posts: 51

    Is there a way to do this for hdr lighting backgrounds? I have a scene which is working well excepting a over blown light through a window removing the hdr bit works for the window but leaves the rest of the scene not so good:( The background doesn’t seem to have nodes and I can’t find away to edit the rays on the first method…

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    22
     Mar 12, 2012 at 7:16 pm
    • Jonathan Williamson
      Posts: 2971

      For HDR backgrounds you can mix two background shaders, one at high strength the other at a low strength, and then control the mix via a Camera light path. I used this on a recent project and it works really well!

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      22.1
       Mar 13, 2012 at 8:28 am
      • Glen Sumner
        Posts: 51

        When I try to mix the background I only can access the sidebar not the nodes and only have one strength box so in the top I have mix node value: is a light ray the colour1 environment light tga, colour 2 environment tga, then underneath is a strength box….( I have a new blender 2.62.1 rev44807 if this makes a difference). Just wish we could use nodes on this!

        ( thanks for replying to such an old tut so quickly Jonathan! I really appreciate what you guys do on this site its brilliant!)

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        22.1.1
         Mar 13, 2012 at 7:18 pm
  23. Glen Sumner
    Posts: 51

    Doh found it ! in the node view click on world on the which nodes to edit. I should have seen that before!

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    23
     Mar 14, 2012 at 6:05 pm
  24. Paul Jackson
    Posts: 6

    iM oN My New Computer,It has a Ati Radeon HD 5670
    With A Cpu AMD X2 Rendering Is Much Faster!
    Also,Thank You

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    24
     Jun 7, 2012 at 2:45 pm

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