Is there any way to make a object appear to glow in Vue?

Yes in Vue 3 but not sure about Vue 2.

The ambient light control under the Effects tab in the amterial editor. You want to have the ambient setting set higher than the diffuse setting. Just bump it up about 20% to see the effect and go from there. But you have to have a direct light source of some sort on an object with ambient settings or else it won't "glow". Then you can maybe make a copy of the object and apply some fuzziness to it with the ambience, and maybe you'll get a halo sort of glow around it.

Yes, it's in Vue 2 also. :)

How did it go KenG? Here is one done with Vue 3. No post production. Its an unfinish image which I'm not doing any further but thought I jsut show you the 'moon'.

Oh, that is cool, Bill! :)

What I've I been playing with is converting my "PoserTown" buildings to Vue format. I wanted to do some neon on the rear truss sign and make the street lights a little more believeable. While far from perfect, this is my first attempt (it took forever to render). Once I get the formulas down for the lighting, expect to see a lot of images with these buildings. The truss sign is available free on my website (http://www.empken.com/downloads.htm)in Poser format...

"to do some neon on the rear truss sign and make the street lights a little more believeable" errr...I read that but still don't quite understand the part you mention about being "neon". "(it took forever to render)"...for 'heavy' scene like that, you can selected the items you want to render only thru the "renedr" menu. This is great for test run which I normally do. Anyway, I will check out the truss sign at your site and see what you mean by neon at its rear.

Hey Ken, that looks pretty good-- I like it, especially the building textures. Bill, what he means by neon is, a neon light creates an ambient glow as the gas contained in a vacuum within the neon tube is electrically charged, as opposed to an incandescent light which glows through resistence-induced heat. A neon light is similar to a fluorescent light, except far more adaptable, and is often used for buildings such as taverns, game rooms, and theaters, outside. Neon lights are meant usually to catch attention and be decorative, as opposed to being a practical light source for an object or area.

Thanks Mike :) Yes...I do know what a neon light is but what I do not know exactly what KenG exactly meant by "neon on the rear truss sign" as the rear can be anything from the support stand to the side trimming of the sign board. Not clear is also the wording "Posertown" in red (can you see a glismp of it?) which I just know after visiting his web site. I got 'confuse' because neon lights or neon tubing runs are use on sign board wordings and side trimmimg only. Anyway, thanks for the technical part of the description :)

The neon sign really doesn't come though too well in the scene. It's atop the steel framework in the upper-right hand corner of the picture. You can sort of see the red and magneta letters. Also, I'm familiar with the "selected render" opinion. Unfortunately, I didn't want to use that here since I'm interested also with how the light plays with the scene. I just wasn't prepared for the 10 hour render time on my "fast" machine. ;) My reason for asking about simulating glow as that in the future I may want to do more night scenes and I see it as an important tool to learn. Lighting has always been a weakness of mine so I've started challenging myself.

heyas; i believe ken means that the neon tubes are behind an opaque sign-front, and cause the glow to splash out from behind it on the edges. correct me if i'm wrong. anyway, as for HOW to make things glow....! you can try making additive/fuzzy additive materials. this is actually the worst way. if you duplicate your neon shape and size it up, puff it up... and stack a couple fuzzy-additive materialed copies of it over your lights, that might achieve the effect you want. but additive materials really depend on what is in the scene behind them. you can use the diffuse/ambient sliders of the material (in the last tab) to raise the light that appears on the object, increasing it to more than falls in the scene, and making the object glow. you can even set the percentages to higher than 100% by typing in numbers in those boxes. for a light-casting object, try turning the diffuse off and the ambient to several hundred. this makes self-illuminating objects, but does not cast the glow into the scene. do note however, that the ambient percentage control is affected by how much ambient light is in your scene (under the sun controls). if you turn off the ambient light in your scene, even 999% of that ambient light is going to make your glowing object still be dark. after you up the diffuse/ambient percentages, you can then place spot/point lights in your scene to light up the glowing item, and the stuff around it. you can also study daffy's sun flare object/material. it's a glow painted on a square, with a transmap and high ambient/diffuse material. you slap this over wherever you want the flare to appear in your scene, more or less parallel to the picture plane. :)

I meant to send this image earlier. Some of bloodsong theory is inside. If you think is is close to what you want, playing around more should get you there. There are small values of point light in the outer neon wordings and they are all set to full fuzzy. The red area of the word has a small % of transparency. Having a directional light on it give different result but this image does not. I think if you add bloodsong.."if you duplicate your neon shape and size it up, puff it up... and stack a couple fuzzy-additive materialed copies of it over your lights,"...it may yield better result. Good luck :)

you can also study daffy's sun flare object/material. -- Oops. Laurie's made some wonderful toys for us, but in this case, the sun flare material was made by Silverbranch. It can be found on the Room With A Vue site (if you can reach that site), or you can try checking her own site because I think it might be there, too: http://www.pagangraphics.com/vue/ulthm.htm

That looks like the ticket! Thanks to everyone!

oops! sorry silverbranch! :) thanks, varian.

Here's my test result...

heyas; it looks like the expanded glow part is too thin. you need to stack several copies of those to get it thicker. um, and/or make the fuzziness less fuzzy. or it might look good without that part at all. :)