Actually, i think there are two reasons why your first image doesn't look good . I'll try to explain you what Environment Lightning does when you add it to an object . Basically, it adds some Anything Glows lights in the scene, on the facets (triangle) of your object . Just open your sequencer tray and expand the EL group attached to your object and you'll see what i mean . The place of these new lights depend on the facets, like i said, so if there is a concentration of facets in a area of your object, the AG lights will concentrate in the same area . And of course, the emitted light will not be regular . See the settings i've used for my neon tube : it's just a simple cylinder, but it has a lot of facets disposed regularly . The second reason is basic : don't make your cylinder cast shadows . So edit its properties to disable the 'cast shadows' option, and it should be better . And you know, you can use EL even with a slow computer, with some tricks . The image you see has rendered in 23 seconds on my AMD 1400, and the scene has 333 lights ! I've already explained those stuff in some previous posts, anyway i'm sending you my render settings : you'll get the fastest render with this :) . But don't forget to put the 'sampling' options off when you render your final image ! Hope this helps :) litst