3Delight: Neon emit light?

Scavenger

IN 3Delight, is there a way to make neon objects actually emit light..not just "glow" with the ambient setting, but add light to the scene in actuallyity?

sriesch

    UberAreaLight:
    To make a surface emit light, select the surface, then select "!UberAreaLight Base.dsa".  Then, in the Surfaces(color) tab:
    To see the light source itself, set "Ambient Active" to On, and set the Ambient color, and apply an image to the Ambient Color if you want the light to have surface features.
    To change the color of the light emitted, set Color .  
    Change the Intensity slider up to make it brighter; note some lights may need to be dramatically brighter to be seen, work with powers of 10 to start with.  Opacity can also be used at the same time.
    To fix any graininess, especially in shadows: increase the samples parameter (at the cost of greatly increased render time).  The value varies greatly depending on the light.  I have seen 32 work for some lights, 1024 was needed for one.
    TODO Falloff Active was somehow set to Off, although my notes indicate it defaults to on.  see what happens on a fresh installation, do I need to adjust it to "on" the first time?

 

mjc1016

There are other ways, but UberArea is possibly the easiest.

There is an example AreaLight in the ShaderBuilder that can be used and I find a bit faster (sometimes) than UA.  If you've never done anything with ShaderBuilder, it won't show up in the ShaderPresets folder...but it will be in the ShaderBuilder itself.  All that needs to be done is to compile it...open the ShaderBuilder tab (add it) then on the left under Light, find the DzAreaLight...right click on it and Compile Network.  That should build it and the support files it needs.   Then it will be in the Shader Presets > Shader Builder folder, under Light.

After that, everything is pretty much the same as for the UberArea light, as far as setup and use goes.

Scavenger

I use a UE2 light for the basic ambient light (one of the core lighting lights)...these can be used with that on as well?

 

Edit: hmm..nver seen this shader builder thing..interesting.

mjc1016

No, UE2 is a 'general' global environment light.

Depending on the layout you are using it will be one of the tabs next to the Viewport or accessible from Windows > Panes (Tabs) menu.

 

Scavenger

I meant... can the uberenviroment and a (or many) uber area be used at the same time?

 

(or the shader builder one)

mjc1016

Yes...they can be used at the same time.

Here's a couple of renders...the first is with the DzArea light from ShaderBuilder (samples are set to 256 on this one) it took 11 and half minutes to render.

The second is UberArea ( 256 samples, too) and it took 23 and a half minutes to render.

The sign is http://pixelworlds.deviantart.com/art/Neon-Open-Sign-3D-Resource-145355020 (converted to obj in Blender...the DS dae import was not pretty).

Scavenger

By samples, that's the setting on the light right? not the Pixel samples in the render engine?

 

I went with the Shader builder one.. Uber area was proving too complicated for me to get it looking right...things kept going white out at settings they shouldn't have... the Shader Mxer with the simple intensity setting I could get it going.

sriesch

Scavenger said:

By samples, that's the setting on the light right? not the Pixel samples in the render engine?

Correct.

Scavenger

I had used a morphable rope to create neon tubes, and then tried to light them with the shader mixer which I couldn't get to work now, so I switched to the uber base which could...but the results were not great.

I found in an iray pic I did, a bunch of "neon" around a room really can flood the place with it's light, but I wasn't duplicating the effect here in the new scene. So instead, I've created large planes, made them uberarea lights and placed them basicly where the light should be effecting, and that's seeming to work well.