Hello everyone and thanks for looking...

Got a question about creating a lighted object in Poser 8, but when I typed "poser lights props procedural" into the tutorial search function, it came back with over 600 entries, but didn't display any of them! (Does the Rendo search tool have issues? I use Google Chrome... )

What I want to do is take a Poser basic cylinder object, make it into a long thin laser beam, then change it's material settings so that it is a colored light source. Kind of like a florescent light, or a light saber. If it can give off a soft glow, even better.

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=1863987&user_id=460330&page=10&member&np 
Click this link for an example of what I'm trying to do.

Usually I do these effects in post work with Photoshop, but I'm trying to get the light reflections off shiny surfaces. Does anyone know how to do this?

Thanks,
Tom
Seaview123

Set the ambient value to any positive number above zero and the ambient color to anything other than black.

To make it give out light you need to use IDL.  Dunno how to implement that since I'm still using P6.

BB recommends a very high value - well above 100% - for the object to make a significant glow.

 Thanks Sam... but I also don't want to over power the other lights in the scene. I'm using IBLs for most of my lighting now, and they get 'whited out' pretty easily by other sources...

AFAIK, you should only need one IBL in your scene but don't take my word for it.  I do know, however, you should use IDL for an ambient light glow.  Whether or not you should use IBL and IDL in the same scene is something I know nothing about.

an old method is simply to embed some lights in the prop, point lights should work. Use abient setting to get the material glow appearance and the lights to provide actual light. You can also use the gather node to make the prop an emitter of light. 

IDL is the way to go for P8 in this situation, especially if you are expecting the lighting effect to reflect off other surfaces.  As SamTherapy mentioned, a high ambient value is a must to accomplish this, and it is not unreasonable to push that value to 500% and beyond.  IDL will provide adequate global illumination without IBL because it precalculates, not only,  your scenes lighting, but any prop/object shedding its own emission as well.. 

I use IBL now in P8 as sort of a fill light. The intensity is never more than 20%. I don't even attach an image to it. Then maybe I'll have two or 3 other low level lights and render using 3 IDL bounces. When moving from earlier versions of Poser to Poser 8's IDL, you really have to relearn lighting.