Hey Nancy, Make sure you are using 'Portal Light (mia)' node (there are 2 portal_light nodes) and 'visible in render' (just below 'Tint') is turned off.
Cheers! On Sat, Jul 6, 2013 at 4:17 AM, Nancy Jacobs <[email protected]> wrote: > Hey, sorry to bother you guys again so soon, but wondering if anyone knows > what would make portal lights NOT show the image behind them, in the > background, wrapped in the environment sphere. > > This is an old problem I never could figure out, and it's driving me > crazy... > > I have a room environment where I want to use portal lights, but when I > turn on area light>visible in render, the portal light blocks the view > outside. If I switch that off, I get error messages about how it is > supposed to be on. > > A couple years ago Manny sent me a test file which has portal lights > working as they are supposed to, and I even imported my double-sphere > environment into it, and the lights work ok with it (they don't block the > background image), with "area light>visible in render" switched on. Portal > lights with these same settings block out the same environment background > in my project. It's one of those visible hi res background spheres, plus a > visible only to secondary rays HDR sphere to light the scene. IT works in > the test scene, so why not the real scene? > > I swear I've checked everything. In the test file it seems you can check > all sorts of visibility options on and off, and nothing matters except > keeping the 'visible in render' parameter in the PORTAL LIGHT/Color section > switched off, and it still reveals the background, as should be. > > Anyway, if anyone has encountered this very frustrating problem, please > let me know what I could be missing. > > Any ideas? Possibilities? > > Thanks, > Nancy >
