can anyone point me in the right direction for making neon strip lights? all mine don't work. John

If you're wanting to turn a cylinder into a light, I don't think that's possible. But you can turn the diffuse and ambient all the way up, turn off cast shadows, self shadows, receive shadows on a cylinder and then put several lights INSIDE it and adj the range or fall-off to get the effect you want. But I could be misinterpreting what you're trying to do. Hope this helps. John

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Here's a thread where Clay shows how to make a neon/florescent tube light. (If this is what you are trying to accomplish).

Arleen

If clays' light throws to much light you could try this, as what tjohn said.

Oh...not what tjohn said, sorry. This has no lights inside.

It's a shame that all lights have to be point sources.

What I do is first make a cylinder. In the material lab, change ambient color to a very very light and make the ambience value 90. Kill diffuse values. Now duplicate this cylinder, and make the diameter a bit larger (if the other one was quarter sized, this one is 50-cent piece sized) Make the ambient color the actual color of the light (not nearly as light as the last one.) Make it a fuzzy material, ambience at 80, transparency at 70. Duplicate this one again and make the diameter just a little bigger (these two outer cylinders should be closer together than to the inner smaller one.) Move the transparency up to 90. Tweak color as necessary. Add a few radial lights with similar color and you're done!

Very impressivo madmax!

mr mad, sir. you are a genius worth of a salute salutes rimmer stylee from what i have seen and read yours look perfect. thanks everyone, i'll try them all and see which is best... John

It looks great madmax - but alas, you can still spot exactly where the radial lights are when you look more closely.