Simulating Self-Illumination Materials with V-Ray 1.50 for 3ds Max/VIZ

VRay materials don't have a self-illumination setting like standard materials do. Sometimes you may need a vray material to provide its own illumination and there is a way to do that. If you make a vraylight material and assign a map to the color channel, you achieve a self-illuminated material in VRay. A VRaylight material looks practically identical to a standard material with self illumination at 100.

A vraylight material emits a small amount of light with its multiplier left at the default 1.0. By increasing that value, you can make it throw off more light, though it additively brightens the color map you have assigned. This may be undesirable in some cases. You can make it give off more light without it brightening the map by right clicking the object and selecting VRay-properties. From there, you can increase the "Generate GI" value.

If you don't want it to actually emit light, but still have a self-illuminated appearance, you can right click on the object and open the VRay-properties. From there, uncheck the "Generate GI" toggle.

So VrayLight materials are great, but there aren't any of your regular material controls available. Well, there is also a way to use a VrayLight material and still retain all the VRay material controls, like refract, reflect, etc. The way you do this is you create a Vray material, and create a VrayLight material. Then you create a VrayBlend material, and set the VRay material as the base, and the VrayLight as a Coat. (Since it blends at 50%, you may need to double your VrayLight material multiplier to get it to look normal again. But you have total control over reflection, refraction, bump, etc...