Creating 3D christmas light objects in 3DS max and then Unreal.

[kevin miller]

How would one suggest to create objects similar to the attached images? My thought was to create the objects in spline and then create light objects with self illumination materials that could be cloned/ arrayed along spline. I think a blend material could be used in the animation but not sure.

 

 

[Francisco Penaloza]

I did something similar for the background of a VR video.

For what I remember it was all renderable splines with self-illuminated materials but they had cell or noise shaders masking the self-illumination channel, this faked the blinking of the lights. Also since the noise moves in a directional way, it faked the lights moving in directions and sequences.

Again, my short was from some distance so no need to model light bulbs or more detail on the splines.

[kevin miller]

Again, my short was from some distance so no need to model light bulbs or more detail on the splines.

 

 

Pretty interesting. I actually do not need high poly or detailed objects since this will be in an evening scene and we would probably want to keep the people on the lane driving down with the light structures some distance off. My idea was that I could use renderable splines for the overall shape of like a santa or snowman and then use the align spacing tool to distribute objects with self illuminated materials. Not sure how to get the blinking light thing. Maybe you could tell me more about your idea? Thanks for the help. Appreciate it.

[Francisco Penaloza]

the blinking light could be done in different ways, actually.

You can always animate the intensity of the self-illumination, or even animate the colors changing. You could keyframe and then repeat that with the graph editor, or apply noise effects to create random intensity.

I am not in my desk now, but you can find that in the graph animation editor.