You can turn off the limits for your ambience setting by double clicking on 'Ambient Strength' in the Advanced Surfaces tab and then setting 'Respect Limits' to 'No" in the resulting popup.

If you then set your ambient strength high (I often use ranges between 200-400%)and use a light ambient colour you can simulate an object glowing.

You can sometimes use point lights to help with the effect. For things like glowing screens, throwing a spotlight with the angle spread adjusted directly onto the screen can also be quite effective.

As an example, I recently used settings like the above to make a dark textured floor visible without adding extra lights. See the Renderosity gallery at

http://www.renderosity.com/viewed.ez?galleryid=1094910&Start=1&Sectionid=43&filter_genre_id=3&WhatsNew=Yes

Before I upped the ambience the floor was completely dark.

Message edited on: 11/24/2005 17:17