Hi,

I've imported an OBJ from DAZ Studio as it's a good promo prop to use, it's got some built in geometry dedicated to light the scene from above. So I figured it would be easy.

1. Material Room
2. Use the selector eyedropper to select the geometry (RC LED'S)
3. Pull out from the Ambient node and down in the Cycles nodes choose Emissive

Is that correct or is there a better way rather than parenting a light to every single one of the LED areas, there are allot of them!

Thanks for the help!

Richard

The emissive node is more dedicated to the cycle node for Superfly. If you intend to use the PoserSurface panel, you bump the ambient value to 1 or higher and set your ambient color to whatever color you want.

OK, I do remember that but thought there was another way. I'll go with that then. Thanks so much

OK, another question. IF I wanted the Ambient to emit like a light what value should I set it at? I've got it currently at 2000.000000. While it looks more like a light now when rendered it's still not casting any light on the figures shoulders.

There is no single right answer as to what the ambient value should be set at; for a large area mesh, 1 may be just right, whereas for a small intense light such as an LED indicator light, you may need it set to 70.

Simply jacking up the ambient usually results in the light itself appearing very bright, but only weakly casting light.

In Firefly, I use an "IDL emitter" mesh outside of -but closely fitted to- the light mesh. With the emitter property set to not cast shadows and not be visible in camera, I crank its ambient way up, while the visible light mesh has a moderate ambient value. The result is that the light's apparent brightness is matched by the emitter's lightcasting strength.

In Superfly, you don't need a hidden emitter mesh; you can use a LightPath node and do some color math to get the camera to see more light cast from the prop.

Some glowy demo freebies

. Other freebies (many have meshlight parts)

LightPath.. I'll look at that, thank you!

OK, loaded that up. My oh my. I have no idea what to do with that. There are so many options. What's a simple set up and what node in the PoserSurface would I plus would I plug that option into?

Several of the key SuperFly shader sets, made and distributed when Poser 11 first appeared, have 'glow in the dark' light emitters. e.g. those from Vince Bagna, Ghostship, etc. Just drag-and-drop.

@RAMWolff - Here are the LightPath ambient boost nodes highlighted - one of the MT5 files in my freebies allows you to add -not "replace"- only these nodes to an existing color texture.

.

Plug your color texture into both of the sockets highlighted with the green ovals.

@HartyBart : Just my opinion, but I don't think that they work well; the visible prop is very bright, but the lightcasting is weak. The lightcasting falls far short of the apparent brightness of the visible prop.

Here's a simple lightcaster material (Superfly) :

"my color texture" would be replaced by your image map, or your procedural, or a whole string of nodes to generate the color/texture you want.

The darker the color you put in the glow boost adjust color block, the stronger the lightcasting response. Lighter greys will give only a gentle lightcasting boost.

Yea, none are working for me. It's strange that iRAY is sort of based off of Cycles but I can't get light emanating from a light fixture. The only lights that work are the typical ones you find in Poser. What is the deal with Emissive lighting? Is there a tutorial on this somewhere? I'm not a Poser expert so trouble shooting this is not something I can do with the little knowledge I have of lighting in Poser. In DAZ Studio I'm pretty OK with lighting.

I have not been able to get the emissive feature to work dependably/consistently. But bagginsbill's LightPath (driving the ambient socket) method works in Superfly.

EClark's candelabra model, bagginsbill's LightPath lightcasting, 3dcheapskate's procedural flame texturing, used together (no Poser lights in flames, Superfly render):

@RAMWolff ; are the LED lights a separate material zone? If so, copy the "simple" material I posted. If you have a single-zone instrument panel, make a black/white mask (LEDs white, all else black) to control the ambient value.

P.S. I have pulsing and strobing lightcaster materials for animation of LEDs amongst my freebies. ; )

What render engine are you using?

If using Firefly, you must engage IDL to get meshlighting.

Superfly does it inherently, but you'll want give more "samples" to meshlighting.

Hi,

I'm using Superfly to make the Promo's. It's a pose pack for L'Homme. The candles look really really nice. The imported OBJ does have separate zones for various parts of the room and yes, the lights are their own zone. One zone for all of them though! I'll have to check out your freebies and see what's there. Thanks!

OH, I recognize your works from the fiery harry horse freebie from a while back. COOL! I did some stuff for Dusk and Dawn for the Hivewire 3D store but at the time I was working solely in DAZ Studio but now I've converted to Sat... I mean Poser!

RAMWolff posted at 7:27PM Wed, 26 August 2020 - #4397811

the lights are their own zone. One zone for all of them though!

Easy! :D Just use the color map which has the LED colors in place of the "my color texture" node in my example above! And... you're done! :D

RAMWolff posted at 7:30PM Wed, 26 August 2020 - #4397812

OH, I recognize your works from the fiery harry horse freebie from a while back.

Yes, lightcasting works for entire dolls also...

Pauline as a fire sprite:

HiveWire's Harry the horse as a fiery refractive ghost Pegasus:

Pauline as Cortana (Halo video game series):

MATs for these effects are in my freebie packs.

I didn't download the Pauline pack as it seemed to be just for her!

Hmm, not seeing the hyperwhite_amplifier node option. Did you perchance change the name? Seems to be a Math node from what I can gather!

RAMWolff posted at 8:16PM Wed, 26 August 2020 - #4397817

Hmm, not seeing the hyperwhite_amplifier node option. Did you perchance change the name? Seems to be a Math node from what I can gather!

Yes! the hyperwhite_amplifier is a ColorMath node, and boosted output -> ambi is a blender node. Glow boost adjust is a Simple_Color node. I try to title nodes so as to explain what I'm doing.

Look for either of these MT5 files; they are intended for you to add them to an existing material (not replace), and plug your texture color into the ambient boosting.

I'm fairly sure that this partial MT5 is in this Superfly material sampler pack, among others.

This pack has a few LED MATs.

I kinda figured. Newbie here! LOL

So I don't think I did something right. Can you check it and see what's up? Should this set up be casting light if there is no other regular Poser light in the room or is it one of those "render and see" sort of things? Feels off to me!

The color math node (must be color math) should be set to divide, not cosine. In the root, set diffuse value to zero. The glow boost adjust color block should be some shade of grey, but not black - that would be dividing by zero.

You won't see any lightcasting effect until you render, but you can set Superfly to progressive and quickly see if the effect is working. It will cast light even if there are no Poser lights in the scene.

The Color_Math Divide is probably very confusing to noobs. HSV with a value >> 1 would be more intuitive.

Just want to add another comment.

While I appreciate artistry and one should always take control of any situation and physics be damned...

The reality is that when you look at a light source, its apparent brightness is thousands of times brighter than the diffuse reflections it creates on other objects.

Consider two narrow beams of light among the many going out from a small bulb.

One goes straight into your eye. Let us declare that the apparent perceived brightness of that is X. It doesn't matter what exactly that is in lumens or whatever - let's just call it X.

Now consider another beam of light of the same power goes in a different direction and strikes your outstretched hand. That beam then bounces IN EVERY DIRECTION from your hand. That is how pure Lambertian diffuse reflection works - the light splits off and goes to every point on a hemisphere around the point of contact, roughly equally. Only a tiny fraction of that reflected light goes into your eye. The rest goes all over the room.

That light from your hand is typically X / 1000 in brightness - it's VASTLY darker than the beam that went directly from the bulb to your retina.

The self-lit sphere is set to .5 intensity, color RGB 255 255 255. The figure is very dark - and this is 100% realistic.

Now the ball intensity is set to 500. Being only a foot from the figure's face, the face is overexposed, but the shoulders and arms are perfectly lit.

This is the glowing ball shader. There is nothing more to it.

OK, thanks Baggins. I'll give this a try as well. Not having any luck with all these complicated setup's! :sad:

Are there render settings that should be in play here? Using your setup I have this result and as you can see there are about 30 spots that this shader is plugged into via the UV material space.

Here are the spot light settings set up as you instructed. Maybe I got something wrong! LOL

I have to laugh at myself and apologize for my stupidity. I had the Render settings set to Preview render, now that I'm using Superfly it's all working. So very sorry!

That's GREAT!

Ghostbuster Roxie on Level 19 (Superfly) - lots of glowy stuff: