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Glowing parts? 4

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taled

taled

Materials
Sep 19, 2005
21
I'm trying to make part of a model look as if it is made from the same sort of material as glow stars, so it sort of gives of it's own glow. is this possible? any suggestions would be great. Thanks again.
 
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Right--check out what Scott said. In Photoworks you can add (I forgot what it's really called), but you can add something that has it's own glow--luminescence? I'm not sure. It's in the material properties within PhotoWorks.

If you don't use PhotoWorks, I don't think you'll have much luck with glowing parts.


Jeff Mowry
Reality is no respecter of good intentions.
 
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Thanks very much for your help I'll have a go!
 
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I've been having a go with photoworks but still not luck, any suggestions where abouts it is in the material properties table?
 
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Thanks rockguy. I'll have a quick go at the global illumination.
 
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I don't think you'll want constant--it will appear as a solid batch of color--no surface delineation or differentiation.

I've got an animation running right now, but hope to look up the name of the characteristics I'm thinking of and post back later.

Indirect or global lighting will allow these effects--without them, you won't get good results.


Jeff Mowry
Reality is no respecter of good intentions.
 
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Are you thinking of Dielectric Jeff? That is the only other thing I can think of but I didn't think it would work correctly. I guess I was think (glowing stars) are really just a flat surface and with some transparency adjustment it may look ok? It's hard to know without actually playing with the model and changing the settings.

Rob Rodriguez CSWP
SW 2006 0.0
 
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There are at least 2 ways to do this:

1) Use a fog light which is positioned on the opposite side of the object and shine it towards the viewer. Set object material to transparent plastic. You may need to create a physical barrier so that the fog light is allowed to only shine through the "neon" object. Apply the neon color to the fog light. You do not need indirect illumination to get this effect.

2) Render without the glow and use Photoshop to apply an outer glow to the selected area.
 
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Rob,

What I was thinking of goes back to the PW 1 engine--I cannot find the setting in PW 2. The term was called Emission--as in light emission. I don't see it anywhere.

I used it once to simulate the beam of a laser pointer--transparent part that emitted red light, so it rendered differently than the other parts.

So what Stoker says above should work fine, but it comes with the limits expressed as well. I'll see if I can find another decent substitute.


Jeff Mowry
Reality is no respecter of good intentions.
 
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OK, I got something else to work. I assigned a constant reflectivity property to an Injected plastic part. I can control the color and transparency of the part--the less transparent, the more the "glow".

You'll need to have a darker background/lighting/scene with indirect lighting used.

I'll post some images soon so you can see what this does. It may be what you're looking for.


Jeff Mowry
Reality is no respecter of good intentions.
 
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OK, now I've got images. I hope the links work.

I modeled two spheres on a blank white base (for reflection and shadows). The first sphere was blue glass (control sphere). The second sphere was altered to see progressive differences in materials, but started as simple Injected Plastic with a typical glow-in-the-dark greenish color.

The first experiment used a material set to Conductor on the second sphere:

The next used a Dielectric, but that still wasn't quite right:

Next, I tried a Constant material, with Transparency:

That was too transparent. Reduced:

Too solid. This seemed better, at .30:

Finally, with a black background and reduced direct lighting:




Jeff Mowry
Reality is no respecter of good intentions.
 
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You too, Rob. I don't think I would have considered the Constant setting apart from your bringing it up.

Inerestingly, I use the Constant setting to render logos and such in pure color within SolidWorks. I often find it simpler to generate graphics by creating something in SolidWorks, setting the colors the way they need to be for each element, and then rendering to a TIFF file for use in Photoshop or the decal editor in Photoworks. So I don't normally use it with indirect lighting or transparent parts. It seemed to work well.

This technique ought to work with other types of materials--I chose Injected Plastic since I work with that material type all the time. You can probably choose other materials that better represent the right level of gloss and roughness to get exactly what you need with this method.


Jeff Mowry
Reality is no respecter of good intentions.
 
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Indirect illumination with the constant setting is really the key to the glow. I have set faces to constant using ID to act as light sources or the entire scene many times. It's one of those things I just sort of stumbled onto. Your right the technique does work with other materials depending on the effect you're looking for. The drawback is the extra time it takes to calculate the indirect illumination. You have some great images on your site. I'd like to see more.

Rob Rodriguez CSWP
SW 2006 0.0
 
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Rockguy, Theophilus and Stoker your advice is brilliant, you have definitely answered my question. I've got all your advice written down and I'm now gonna give it a go. Thanks very much!
 
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Just to be clear here, the indirect illumination/constant material method and the fog light method will NOT give the same results. Which method to choose depends on what you are looking for:

If you look at the indirect illumination examples, notice that you only see a "glow" on the materials that are adjacent to the neon part. You do not get any glow in the air space surrounding the part. If you look at Jeff's final rendering, there is only glow on the floor next to the bottom surface of the sphere. There is no glow coming from the upper half of the sphere because there is no material next to it to catch the bounced light from the indirect illumination.

The fog light method will give a glow even around areas that are not adjacent to another part. You will get a glow around the entire perimeter.
 
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Stoker, that's a good point. In my scene, I believe I turned the directional light down to 20% or less. I would think the directional light could be replaced by a dim fog light to get the most complete results, still using indirect lighting as the illumination type.

I also think a darker color for the glow-in-the-dark material will offer differing effects--probably to visually-cue the thickness of the material (if it has variable thickness or ribs) because of the material transparency setting. So the effect should be able to be fine-tuned for great results.


Jeff Mowry
Reality is no respecter of good intentions.
 
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