I saw a thread a while back that you can make things glow without any lights lights using gather nodes, but I didn't see the material set up. Can someone please show me a screen shot of the material room for making an object glow?

Attached Link: http://www.runtimedna.com/mod/forum/messages.php?forum_id=43&ShowMessage=192511

Acadia asks the same today at RunTimeDNA. Over there are more links to the rendo topics.

Attached Link: http://www.castleposer.co.uk

There are two parts to making something glow without using lights. If you want an object to be a light source, then plug the 'probelight' node (new node > lighting > diffuse > probelight) into the ambient channel. The probelight node has several different variable on it, most of which relate to the amount of light coming from different directions, and the colour of that light (each variable is set up as a three-number RGB setting from 0-1 for each section). I can't remember what each of the variables relates to exactly, but over at runtimeDNA, relik has a tutorial relating to just this thing (glow effects part 2). So, that's what you need to do if you want something to act as a light source. If you want other objects to react to this source, and 'reflect' the glow back, then you need to use the gather node. This node collects data from the ambient nodes of other materials around it, and 'reflects' it back. For more details on this node, then go to the above linked site, and take a look at his two tutorials on the node. The first covers where you can plug it on the root node, while the second looks at the different settings within the gather node itself. I'm not going to replay everything that JohnrickardJr says in his tutorials, but here's a couple of things to bear in mind: 1) the samples setting adjusts the 'clean-ness' of the reflected glow. A low setting will give a very noisy effect, while higher amounts will result in a smoother appearance - at the cost of higher render times. 2) as with all raytraced nodes in Poser, the bias is a tricky beast to get right. You want to get it as low as possible, but get it too low and you'll be getting those black spots - the same ones that AO or raytraced shadows can cause with too low a setting. The trick is to find a balance. 3) the gather node can be plugged into several different inputs on the rot node with no discernible change in the end result. This is advantageous, because it is unlikely that you will be using all the possible inputs for a given material - even if you're using alt.diffuse, for example, your ambient channel might still be free. Acadia is asking after much the same kind of thing over at Runtime DNA. As Olivier pointed out, the disadvantage of this method is that the 'glowing object' created by the probleight node doesnt cast shadows, and so can look a little unrealistic if no lights are used in conjunction with it. I'm trying to work on a couple of WIP images for that thread, of a man holding a glowing ball, which I'll post here as well, along with mat room settings. Hope this helps, jonthecelt

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jonthecelt general gratitude for your clear writing and generous explanation here and elsewhere. Special gratitude for explaining what a node does in "everyday" terms the relate to reality. Everytime you (or any of us) do that, it contributes to the making the pot of Poser knowledge richer. Mr. Baggins, same to you! Thanks! :: Opera ::

Thanks so much you guys this is just what I wanted!

Glad to be of service, opera... you know, it's quite incredible. I still only consider myself a dabbler in Poser-dom, especially considering some of the 'greats' that hang out on places like here. And yet often, when a technical note comes up here, I find that I've managed to glean enough information from a number of different places to assemble a semi-coherent whole. For some reason, I also seem to have been gifted with the ability to put things in common sense parlance, as well, so people can understand what it is I'm trying to explain in everyday terms.

now, if someone could just do the same for me, regarding the dynamic hair settings... sigh

jonthecelt

Message edited on: 02/08/2006 14:45

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?Form.ShowMessage=2217752

Yeah, I'm trying to work this out too.

svdl helped me get a glowing ball on a box. I'd still like to know how to do it for other things like a floating object, or a "person" holding a glowing object, or making a staff glow...stuff like that.

Here are the other threads I found on this topic that bagginsbill referred to:

http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?Form.ShowMessage=2222447

http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?Form.ShowMessage=2217752

I'm not so interested in "realism" and proper "Shadows" as I am in achieving this cool effect. I like "pretty" and "ethereal" and "eerie" and this can do that. If I want shadows I can always put them in in post work, but usually with "neon" you don't get loads of shadows anyway.

Message edited on: 02/08/2006 14:48

I plugged the propelight in with out adjusting anything and no light is emitted? I rendered with raytrace

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?Form.ShowMessage=2217752

Follow svdl's instructions in this thread, near the bottom.

I finally got it to work with out the probelight- the probelight just killed it???

Been doing some experiienting with that myself. The probelght is useful if you want to use another node rather than the ambient to create light - so I guess plugging it into the ambient channel is kinda gilding the lily. I'm currently running a third test render on my machine - I've done one with the probelight node in ambient, one with it in alt. diffuse, and a third with purely ambient, no probelight. I'll post the results in a moment. jonthecelt

Ok, here's the first one... this is the probelight node attached to alt. diffuse... jonthecelt

and here's the mat settings used for the 'neon light'. jonthecelt

Here's the ambient only render... jonthecelt

and the material settings for the above... ignore the probelght node sitting there, it's not actually conected to anything! jonthecelt

Finally, here's the render of the probelight node connected to the ambient channel... jonthecelt

and the material settings for render number 3... jonthecelt

In all three cases, these are the material settings for the wall... jonthecelt

Ok, so... looking at the three, I noticed something in hindsight which hadn't been immediately apparent to me at the time. When rendering each f these, i was trying to get a similar look from each one. In so doing, all of them seem to require a 'value' of 8 for the glowing object - whether it be from the ambient calue, the probelight's exposure, or a multiple of the two combined. This would account for the closeness in appearance betwen the renders. That said, there are small differences between the ambient only one and the two using the problight. In some areas, such as the inner ring of the 'o' (I'm looking on the wall here), the ambient only render loses definiton slightly, resulting in a less distinct 'hole' in the middle. Although it's very close indeed (probably as a result of me mucking about with the 'brightness' settings), for my money, I think the alt diffuse one looks the best by a tiny margin. jonthecelt

Hey Jonthecelt is there a way to make 3D text to glow with atmosphere like the way car head lights interact with fog? So the light radiating from the light source has got some substance sorta to it- am I making myself understood?

Let me think on it... a couple of possibilities are running round my head... :) jonthecelt

A hallow effect is what I would like

Yeah, I know wot you mean... part of it depends on whether your text is actually a 3D object, or whether it's a transmapped square, as mine was? jonthecelt

mine is an obj from carrara

ok, then, let's give this possibility a try... and then I'm going to bed!! This is only theory, but it might hold to work well enough. Take your obj, and do the glow thing, in whichever fashion you choose - probelight, ambient, combination, whatever. Take another copy of the obj, and scale it up slightly, so that your original 'lights' are skinned, as it were. (memo to self - this might prove tricky if you scale up the entire sign, as you get scale drift - can you scale up each letter in turn in Carrara, and export as a second obj?) now, we need this second skin to give us the atmospheric glow. It probably won't extend out far beyond the original, but it should give us enough to work. In the skin's diffuse and transparency channels, we need some kind of atmospheric noise plugged in - noise, perhaps, or fbm, or clouds - whatever would make a good 'atmoshpere material' if you were trying to create one normally without the atmosphere material itself (I think relik over at Runtime DNA could suggest a couple of things for this). If we then plug in the gather node to whichever channel we want (alt diffuse is always my favourite, but YMMV), then the dust clouds generated by the diff/trans procedural should catcher the glow of the original light object, whilst still allowing us to see the scene beyond. It all depends, of course, on how dense you make the dust cloud. Please bear in mind that I just wrote this without Poser in front of me, off the top of my head, on my way to bed after a long day of looking after my teething 15-month-old daughter. I make no promises as to the workability of this scheme... but the theory does seem sound to me at the moment. hope this helps. jonthecelt Do you think that

bkmrk

BkMrrrrq

This is what I did in Carrara- I guess I will have to take my scene into Carrara and do it all there

BKMRK

Good idea. Carrara's much, much, much faster at rendering global illumination than Poser 6, with much higher quality. Poser's gather node is more of a curiousity than a practical feature, unless you have a supercomputer and tons of patience.

The problem in both cases (Carrara and Poser) is that GI only works with light sources, as far as I understand it. The neon light ISN'T actually emitting anything, so you need something like the gather node in order to collect the colours thrown off by it. jonthecelt

the speed advantages of Carrara over Poser are real for some things, but highly exaggerated for others. It depends what you are rendering. Thanks for this cool thread on the neon thing. I'll be using it. ::::: Opera :::::

can you spread out the menue boxes so I can see waht nodes are connected to what boxes?

Attached Link: Gather node setting examples.

See this one too

Actually, in Carrara, you can set the glow channel to a very high value to get objects to emit light. I usually use "Value (1-10000%)" for the glow channel, and set it to between 250%-350% depending on the scene. Using actual point or spotlights looks better, because there's less noise.

ahh Raydream, so elegant, intuitive, and simple. Years ahead of itself in so many ways. weeps for it's shader tree Drag and drop shaders. weeps with envy

Irish - I hate to say it, since I love rendering and hate postwork, but since your glowing object (as in post #29 above) is not interacting with an environment, there is no need to do the glow in the rendering tool. Render your object as normal, then bring it into photoshop or similar. Here I have taken your image and applied various glow effects with a couple clicks. The first is Eye Candy "Gradient Glow - Flourescent Tubing", second and third are Eye Candy "Corona". The last is just the photoshop built-in "Outer Glow" effect. These are all highly tunable and can be combined easily. If need be, you can then composite the glowing stuff with a scene.

for animations, After Effects has an excellent glow effect

Thanks bagginsbill yes post work can do a lot- like you I prefer to have the effect done at render time, I am just really starting to explore what Poser is and isn't capable of.