MR: neon light

[nisus]

Hi All,

 

How can I make MR-neon light tubes that actually radiate light?

 

For now I only have a nice tube (using a glow map in the MR-surface-connection) but it doens't enlight the environment. I'm also using FG only to render my scene.

 

Any tips are welcome.

 

rgds

 

nisus

[jophus14]

try http://www.cgtalk.com in the 3dsmax thread then in the mental ray discussion forum

[nisus]

Hi all,

 

Does anyone has a more specific source for neon/tube-light?

tnx

 

nisus

[Joseph Petrino]

Have you tried to put the "output" material in the self-illumination slot of a standard materal?

 

There is a more detailed post somewhere here, but in MR this material will cause the geometry to cast a small amount of light. I dont think you could light a scene with it though.

 

Bare lightbulbs and downlights look very convincing.

[nisus]

a nice trick, tnx!

 

nisus

[nisus]

Hi All,

 

I have another project with lots of neon-lights that need to radiate light.

Anyone who can help, pls? Using MR

 

rgds,

 

nisus

[harrelson]

Hi!!

I think you can use ies ligths, you only have to create some photometric ligth and then load a .ies archive. Put "ies" in google and you´ll find a lot of pages where download this kind of archives.

Hope to be usefull!!

[noi-pi]

Initial test on Glow (lume) shaders shows fine with me.

All of those neon (text) objects are MR materials.

Only a skylight was used to lit the scene here.

 

Here are some description of Glow(lume) shader used on the scene:

Glow ---- Any Color

Brightness ----- 20 - 30

Surface Material ------ Default (Falloff map - recommended)

Diffuse ----- Same as Glow color

 

FG by the way was 2000.

 

I also added Glare shader under Output camera shader.

 

 

Hope this helps.

[nisus]

Tnx NoPi ,-)

 

Just wonder: FG of 2000? i hardly use anything higher than 100 (in max7, max8 should be at least half!)

 

mvg,

 

nisus

[psv1]

maybe it would help to try that :

 

http://forums.cgsociety.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=75113

 

 

cheers sorin

 

EDit: ,,be aware that it needs mr3.4 at least....

Edit: sorry ..it works only in maya....

[Mister3d]

Create mental ray type material(instead of standard max) and put in surface slot- glow(lume). Then adjust color and intensity. The light from glow is seen with fg and it affects shadows, i.e. objects generate shadows from it. So it's what you need. And for neon lights too.

If you want to add specular to it, then put in glow surface material either dgs, or archmat if you use 9 max. If you use dgs and want blurred-flurred reflection then set glossy value it will be rate of reflection(you can put fresnel falloff there) and make your shiny value like between 10-1, these are values when reflection begins to blur.

You can also use parti-volume shader in volume slot of mental ray material and put in surface slot transmat(which makes furface invisible but you can see volume light for this material if applied, it says it transmits information further and won't show any surface information). On Jeff Patton website there's an explanation how to use parti-volume shader, though there it used in volume light example, but you can get the controls. As fas as I remember scatter color is the color of light and extinction controls the brightness(may be wrong), so put it like o,oooo1 and it will be bright. If it's minus it's black, and if make values bigger will become darker too... So I would stick to glow.

 

 

Glare is hidden because it's not stable, so you can't render with glare streaks, it will crash. Use at your own risk.

 

You can make similar glow with standard max means. Assign your materials or objects an id number, then rendering-effects- add- lens effects- glow. There in options set material id and choose corresponding number(which you set in mat id, it's in the material editor near "assign material to selection" button, in the same row, it's a little number 0 by default). And check "unclamp" box there(in glow options dialog), so that not the whole material glares but only bright areas. You can experiment with checked unclamp and unchecked and you will see. Of course this not so sophisticated, but you can play with setting, it's just a rough example.

 

 

...Oh, I see this thread was a bit...long time ago, 8)