There's a material in Vue that ships with the app called 'Halo' in the special effects folder.

I use it to create spheres inside of which I place a light with lens flare turned on. I then adjust the shader to add 'luminous' up to the 80 or 90% range. The resulting effect is a very nice magical glow good for fantasy mages or super hero effects.

For an example, look at this image:

The red 'ball' below the foreground woman's hand is the halo shader with a red light inside. So too is the cone effect in the background to show the super hero being blasted back.

In night images the shader, with a little tweaking, really shines:
Caution: nudity

Now...

I'd like to make a shader that I could use for a similar purpose in Carrara, but my efforts so far have only produced solid balls like the super hero at far left in the first image I linked to. Additionally, I can't seem to get lens flare to work through an object. When I put the light inside a transparent sphere, lens flare refuses to function.

In Vue, the 'halo' shader is 255 Red, 210 Green, 0 Blue in basic color. Highlight global size of 35% and color white.

Global trans of 50%, Fuzzy 75%, Additive, Flare 39% intensity and 10% span.

It has lighting of 80% ambient and 11% contrast.

In the images below, one is a sphere with Halo from Vue, the other shows the lens flare problem of a light inside a sphere, with a second light to the right with working lens flare - and my attempts thus far at recreating the Halo shader, which have not gone well... ;)

Try adding the explosions modifier to the sphere you created, then play with the Blur effect on the sphere. If you experiment with the explosion, atomize, & dissolve, you should get some pretty decent effects. Just save them once you get what you want.

As far as I know no light will pass thru a transparency in carrara. I would try aura's or light spheres and anything glows. I assume you have tried the glow channel. However, I am betting for the most part these effects can be done. Since I haven't done too much of this someone who has work with this kind of thing more hopefully will chime in. I will say that you should check out the glowing light tut on eovia3d.net and the glows tut in c backroom. You can make a volumetric light cone, but it just doesn't pass thru transparent objects.

Light will pass through transparencies if you set that in the render room. But lens flares still fail for some reason...

For a shape light use a plane, or some other shape and a texture map in the alpha channel. Then set the Glow channel to a color of you choosing and apply Anything Glows to the plane, choosing the Glow color for the light color. You can have a light shaped any way you want with this method. That's the method I used for the right-hand picture.

Well, I'm still having the problem that if the light is on the other side rather than inside of a transparent object it loses lens flare. For example, the light on the other side of a glass window.

Light effects in Carrara are independent of the lights themselves, are applied post-render and won't work if your light is 'hidden' behind another object. This applies whether the object is transparent or not.

The solution is to create two lights, one to light your scene from behind your glass object or whatever, the other (placed forward of any obscuring objects) to provide the lens flare or other effect. This light must be 'Visible' but can have its Brightness set to zero so that it shines no light on the scene.

This method is simple enough for a single image but obviously has to be carefully controlled for an animation.

HTH

Message edited on: 01/28/2006 05:58

However, I had to play with this myself and was surprised to find that in the latest version of C5pro light effects DO go through transparency. The secret is to turn OFF "Cast Shadows" in the transparent objects properties.

Here is a quick render:

On the right a spot light inside a sphere with a spotted gel, light cone with 3d shadows enabled.

The transparent sphere has been softened with color and glow both modified with Shader OPs (long live DCG) fake fresnel.

There is a 75% transparent thin sheet you can just see tween the lighted sphere and the cube.

The cube has been shaded with a "bumpy aluminum" from the presets.

Just thought I would point out some of the things possible.

Ed

The question was also asked over at Eovia3D.net and the answer is that Lense flair is a post render effect and it won't work with a light inside a transparent object as it is not volumetric light. Light cone is volumetric. Just do a lighting trick like they have mention in the above posts.

Ringo, Thanks for the clarification.

That above trick is not lens flare though.

This seems like a -MAJOR- failing for carrara, enought to make me consider if I can return the product for a refund. I love working in light effects. Not having them makes an image very stiff... After all, if the rendering engine of Carrara is worthless, than I can't use anything in the application that I can't easily export over to Vue, or even Poser... Which means I also lose things like the replicator, and I end up left with something equivalent to one of the free downloadable 3D modelers...

Message edited on: 01/28/2006 13:22

Sailor_ed that is interesting. I was referring to volumetric light thru transparency. I tried in c5 and it didn't work will have to try that(thought I played with shadow settings.) Arcady, anytime you are looking for something specific like that you really have to check things out.I understand how important it is to you.Maybe someone can come up with some other options. Enhanced volumetric lights would be nice.I suppose if you have vue and like those effects you can port your modeling over to vue unless you like vue 5 modeling which isn't much.

arcady,
I'm afraid I don't understand what your problem is. The picture examples you show don't show anything which can't be produced in Carrara, albeit by slightly different means. If it is that important to you that you produce the effect you are after in a particular way (as opposed to the perfectly reasonable method I describe) I'm surprised you didn't check out the demo version before purchasing. The shading system of an app is particular to its rendering methods and there's never a direct translation with other apps.

Message edited on: 01/28/2006 14:04

I'm seeing all lighting effects get blocked by something in between, and lens flare is just one of them. The only thing not getting blocked if a light sphere.

The sphere I've moved in front of the light in the image here is transparent with shadows off. By moving it, everything turns off for the light now behind it.
If I put a light in front of the sphere, the angle for the effects will be off.
None of the items in the pictures I've shown, far as I can tell, can be reproduced by anything I've found in Carrara... If I'm wrong, then how?

Message edited on: 01/28/2006 14:35

Actually sailor_ed, I recall a thread about this and I think brian hinton said if you turn cast shadows off in c4(maybe c3) it would do this.It still doesn't pick up the trans color tho of the object and you do lose shadows. I think someone from eovia mentioned enhancing this...on the yahoo lists.

I think using the lights with no shape is probably more flexible.

Do you even have a Vue image that has lens flare in it along with glowing balls? Show us one and we'll show you how it's done in Carrara.

I will say that since lens flare is an optical phenomenon due to looking thru glass that maybe another similiar effect is better anyway. Simply put lens flare for this doesn't really make sense to me.I do think some flexibility is in order. In other words getting a certain effect may just not happen the same way in carrara, but I wouldn't throw in the towel. If you could give a specific example it helps like the one above. Understanding someones very particular effect can escape others.

See this image if you are ok with nudity:
renderosity | deviantArt.

There are 17 lights in there, and 5 of them rely on lens flare tweaking. Of these the one I see as problematic in Carrara is the effects I gave to the water in the cauldron. The spells in the witch's hand I can do with light spheres, and the dragon's breath might actually work better in Carrara for the same reason than it did in Vue.

For a non nude:
renderosity | deviantArt.

The sun and the bulb are both lens flare effects. The bulb of course could be a light sphere, but imagine if this scene were viewed through a window. The solar lens flare gains an issue from both angle and from how it works its way through the cage of the gazebo.

I don't care -HOW- I get the results, just that I can still get them... :)

I'm also having an issue with recreating stars (or anything like them - little shapes in the background sky). I've got a seperate thread for that at eovia3d - and presently I'm wondering if a shader on an infinite plane could do it... You can see stars in the non-nude image in these above images.

Perhaps these can be done, and I'm just not seeing the methodology yet.

Message edited on: 01/28/2006 16:05

Actually, while C5Pro still lacks some raytraced light effects, I think it might be a bit silly to dump this application before using its vast flexibility. After living with Vue5I for almost a year -- and working about 5 hours/day with it. I do believe C5Pro's render engine is overall much better than Vue's.

I have no axe to grind, I just use the stuff -- I only like what it can do.

Think glowing gas light effects, think physics, and tiny ionized particles -- not just lights. C5Pro has a lot of ways to do plasma simulations, and I personally don't use "cool" lens flare effect because they are simply undesirable artifacts momentarily raised to the level of art (gee, I can do lens flares with software). When human eyes are replaced by cheap camera lenses Ill reconsider the value of lens flares.

However, Eovia needs to change many of its old (RayDream) light effects from post render to raytraced. Ive suggested this to them more than once, and I guess they think truly realistic light effects (like volumetric cone shadow effects [dust/fog]), are unimportant.

Message edited on: 01/28/2006 16:03

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?Form.ShowMessage=555729

When turning on shadows for the cone light the shadow effects as well as cone effects get stopped when going to a glass window. Not only that, the light does not pick up the glass color and attenuate it based on thickness or color density.

TS not only properly transmits light cone shadows, it attenuates per real-world optical physics, and when it interacts with the glass color, it combines the colors to produce a transmitted light cone that nicely shifts the light spectra. It is more accurate than Vue, which really isnt too bad.

This is not a Carrara bashing thing for me! Overall Im very happy with C5Pro, but I think all us committed users need to remind Eovia that some fundamental features are still missing from C5Pro. I would even be happy if Eovia were to market a nice Light module plug-in to enable the stock light effects to be all raytraced along with C5Pros excellent rendering abilities.

You're referring to the color being picked up? There's alot carrara can do, but if that's the only thing you wanted...you may be out of luck. I think you would have to fake it w/ multiple lights...it can't currently do that.Go put it on the wish list...enough people chime in. They seem to listen.I know lots of people would want this whether they have said so or not.More realistic lighting IS important. Post render for a 3D program is not the right approach.Carrara's strength is it's rendering...they pride themselves on their lighting accuracy so I agree LCBoliou. In this case with the light cone which is not post render, since I think version 2, there should be no reason that the ability to pick up the shader color cannot be added, I just think it was overlooked.

Hey LCBoliou...do you know if TS5 could do that? Curious.

Ren_mem,

Actually, youre right about the cone itself being a raytrace effect. Its just that Eovia must not have enabled the shadow effects of the light cone to be transmitted through transparent materials? If thats the case, it should be easy for their excellent programmers to add this capability.

BTW, If you try and do a nice fluorescent lamp in Vue, then you out of luck, or at least, you will need to find some difficult work-around. Its all about trade-offs.

Dont remember if tS 5 does it or not. I do know that TS 7 seems like a product looking for a niche? TrueSpace has become a really good modeler with a decent rendering engine, but with nothing that sets it apart from, say Hexagon with a decent renderer added. I doubt I will upgrade to tS7 I would just add Hexagon to my tool box (I do think tS is an excellent modeler though).

Look at this:
See the lamp in the back

Is that what you mean?

Note, I did -NOT- spend $250 on Carrara just for the opportunity to be able to trash it in comparrision to Vue. I would much rather have no complaints with what amounts to a large purchase for me.

Its just that for the rendering, and rendering alone, I haven't found anything yet I can't do in Vue, but I do seem to keep finding things I can do in Vue that I can't find ways to do in Carrara.

Outside of the renderer, sure, Carrara is a nice modeler. But many of its features need to be rendered in Carrara, far as I can tell, like the replicator for example. That becomes increasingly frustrating as those are the tools that motivated my purchase. I know 3D as an artist, I've been at it for 7 years now. I want to learn to be a modeler as well now, but in doing so I don't want to have lose access to my skills as an artist. I see some amazing things in Carrara, but they keep showing up as not compatable with the various lighting tricks I enjoy - and as any photographer will also tell you, it is -all- about the lighting. An image or a photo is nothing with bad lighting, and everything with good.

While I am -VERY- gratefull for the solutions that have been posted here to some of the issues, I am also frustrated by the nature of the reponses to some of the others (and especially at eovia3d - some have simply suggested that that kind of light work is not what a person should be doing, or otherwise been flip in denying the issue rather than helping me solve it or work around it - which has in turn motivated some 'comments in haste' on my part), and frustrated where or when there seems to be no solution.

If I could export everything, I might not care that Vue seems to have notably superior lighting package (and possibly renderer).

Make a long tube fluorescent lamp (I should have qualified that in my earlier comment).

You must try rendering some C5Pro scenes that use "advanced" features like raytraced soft shadows (then try this with Vue). Compare rendering complex, high res Vue scenes with GI and RT soft shadows -- compared to C5Pro -- I've done all this. Have you used the terrain modeler -- used the various terrain filters, used the surface replicator to place objects using a distribution shader? You can convert replicated C5Pro objects to "real instances,"(though I don't know why one would want to export them?).

Give yourself a lot of time with C5Pro! I have used both to a large extent, and I honestly think that C5Pro has far more features to learn than Vue, and is a much better overall value -- unless, you simply import stock objects and render small resolution (my small is about 3000x1900). I spent ~$600 on V5I, and...I could write a book on it...problems, objectively defined!

I assure you, C5Pro is an excellent program, but I do confess that you can certainly get up and running faster with Vue5I, but there is a price to pay for a simpler program.

I will say this, Carrara has a rendering engine that has made high-end 3D application users smile when using it!

I'll say this with a side that everyones mileage will vary with any program. I find the lighting & render engine of C5P superior to that of Vue. Which is 1 of MANY reasons why switched in the 1st place and won't ever go back. Lots of good tips for lighting in this thread.

That is nice RIngo, and yes, I see that Carrara can do some very nice things with lights barring two conditions that just happen to hit me hard.

If they could just find a way to keep light effects through a transparency, and have light color be impacted by the transparency...

Before the weekend is over I am determined to find something I can do better in Carrara, given my skills, than I would have done in Vue... Wish me success on that goal ( :) ), cause I'm loading up Poser right now to get a prepatory figure ready for import (and man... is Poser slow or what? I'll give both Carrara and Vue one for that - they both handle Poser figures faster than Poser itself does...)

Message edited on: 01/28/2006 20:36

Arcady just a tip....I spent 2-3 weeks going thru the manual...piece by piece...experimeting and playing around before I did my 1st pic. I'm not saying you haven't but take more time, believe me it pays off :) Good luck :)

Ok, here's a test - something that I've been thinking will likely be the first time in production that light effects become an issue - how would you do those light effects in the rain? In the past I would do rain with a series of curved transparent sheets in between the camera and the scene in which I had a shader that gave a rain like appearance. Now, imagine a car driving in the rain. The spot light end is no problem, but putting a glare or starring effect on the light might get tricky. On the other hand, Carrara might let me do actual 3D rain with the replicator. I could see making one to five drops as very small objects and replicating a few thousand of them into the scene... No idea what kind of memory issue that would cause yet though... but I could build them with a sphere primative morphed in the modeller - and that's something I could not do in Vue. But I'm not sure just yet how I would capture their seeming motion right in a still. Thoughts?

Rain? Just fire up a Particle Object and using the 'Rain' preset. Set it to start before 0:00 and your all set. Instant rain. :D

BT beat me to it:) Yeah the particles engine, are definitely nice. If you are into effects...that's something to explore.

And by the way, you can push the 'create' button in the replicator window to create real instances of replicated things to export. But that is a detail in this thread :)

Particle generator crashed me out when I tried to get it working... I'll have to play with it in a blank scene and see if I can get it to work or if I've found a bug. Real intances of replicated objects would of course be a memory nightmare.

Actually it isn't as bad as I thought it would be. I generated 207 pine trees with the S-Replicator, it used about 93 Mbyte of RAM. I then converted them all to "real" instances and my memory use went to 98 MByte.

It does slow down (gouraud) display speed quite a bit though. So I changed the display to wireframe, and that speeded it up. Going to box display really made it fast. I then converted 317 pines to "real" instances, and memory usage was still ~100 MByte.

Converting instances is very handy for precise up-close manipulation of small groups of objects, and seems to be (IF you have a powerfull PC with a decent video card) quite practical. I really like that flexibility.

BTW, you can populate a sphere with Carrara's replicator, and do some interesting distributions with precise distribution shaders.

Ok, so here's what I have managed to put together out of a desire to find value in Carrara outside of just a modeler (which it will take me months if not a year or more to get value in).

So call this "effort #1", and now I know I can do things I like and I can move on from here. :) Though I may have found a bug with importing Poser magnets in the process...

Message edited on: 01/29/2006 20:58