"Aura" Effect?

dreambornegaming

I am trying to get a specific lighting effect, was hoping someone could help me figure out how to accomplish it. I am trying to get something to not only cast light, but to create a "halo" or "aura" effect... not just casting illumination that is visible when it intercepts a solid object, but projecting visible light around it. Does anyone know how to achieve this sort of effect? I see other people posting renders that utilize what I am looking for (or something similar), so I know it CAN be done, I just don't know how. Thanks in advance for any help you can offer on this topic! :)

fixmypcmike

Iray or 3Delight?

Rodrij

You could try Create>Geometry shell with emissive shaders, some kind of noise opacity map and increase the distance off of the skin in parameters.

dreambornegaming

I am currently using lray; is this the sort of thing that is easier to achieve in 3Delight? I have heard that each renderer has it's own "tips and tricks" list, so to speak. Thank you both for your replies; Rodrij, yours went a fair bit over this newbie's head, could you possibly explain what you meant there? It sounds like it could be something that would work, so I would be interested in trying, but I am so new that your above explanation only confused me, LOL.

Fishtales

Is it possibly the Bloom Filter in Iray you have seen?

http://docs.daz3d.com/lib/exe/fetch.php/public/software/dazstudio/4/new_features/4_8/bloomsettings2.png

dreambornegaming

That could, indeed, be responsible for some of the things I have seen. Basically, I am working a lot with fantasy-inspired art right now, and glowy-aura type effects are really useful for all kinds of things in that setting. Even if it doesn't yield exactly what I want, that looks like a place that I could start. Are the Bloom settings in the render settings menu for lray?

Llynara

Have you looked at Marshian's Body of Light product (for Iray)? Lots of interesting light effects in that package, including chakra glows. I've used it in fantasy and surreal renders and it worked out well. Rim lights might also help you achieve that effect. I used Marshian's Rim Light Rig in 3Delight to do that for my superheroes. There's a rim light setting in Body of Light that does something similar for Iray.

SimonJM

dreambornegaming said:

That could, indeed, be responsible for some of the things I have seen. Basically, I am working a lot with fantasy-inspired art right now, and glowy-aura type effects are really useful for all kinds of things in that setting. Even if it doesn't yield exactly what I want, that looks like a place that I could start. Are the Bloom settings in the render settings menu for lray?

I used a medium bloom setting here,

so that the light reflecting off the figures had the effect.  Depending on who you wanted the rest of the image to b you might need to re-render just teh figures to have the effect (using the Spot Render tool) and add them back as an overlay/new layer in a graphics package (save the spot render as a .png).

With Iray selected as render engine, bloom (plus a couple of other effects) are available via the Render Settings dialog (Ctrl-Shft-R, or Render> Render Settings ...) under the Filtering section of the Editor tab.

dreambornegaming

Thanks so much everyone for your input! I am taking a break today, after the last night of working on my first real project until after midnight, so I will try these tricks out tomorrow.

algovincian

You may also wish to try volumetrics. The following image was rendered in Iray using built-in volumetrics, rather than using the bloom filter:

Sickleyield was kind enough to post some information regarding their use:

http://sickleyield.deviantart.com/journal/Tutorial-Creating-Dust-And-Atmosphere-in-Iray-522291773

Hope this helps.

- Greg

dreambornegaming

I just want to take a moment to say what a truly awesome community this is. I have received so much helpful feedback on my work, and tips to improve it, and help with technical snafus here. You are all awesome! Still steadfastly avoiding doing any more work today to give my brain time to rebound and to allow me to spend some time with my sweetheart, but I am really looking forward to putting all of these fantastic ideas into practice. There's so much to learn and do here!

Llynara

algovincian said:

You may also wish to try volumetrics. The following image was rendered in Iray using built-in volumetrics, rather than using the bloom filter:

Sickleyield was kind enough to post some information regarding their use:

http://sickleyield.deviantart.com/journal/Tutorial-Creating-Dust-And-Atmosphere-in-Iray-522291773

Hope this helps.

- Greg

Love this render! 

algovincian

Llynara said:

algovincian said:

You may also wish to try volumetrics. The following image was rendered in Iray using built-in volumetrics, rather than using the bloom filter:

Sickleyield was kind enough to post some information regarding their use:

http://sickleyield.deviantart.com/journal/Tutorial-Creating-Dust-And-Atmosphere-in-Iray-522291773

Hope this helps.

- Greg

Love this render! 

Thanks, Llynara - both Rawn's and Josh's creations are awesome!

- Greg

dreambornegaming

These are all beautiful work. I tried rendering a scene using the bloom filter, and I am on the right track for the effect I want; I just need to tweak the surface settings of the item in question.  What prompted this whole thread was wanting to create a glowing sphere as part of a staff being wielded by the scene's heroine... While this appears to have worked, I think I need to up my intensity settings on the lighting of the orb, based on what I am seeing in the render (still in progress; damn my outdated hardware). I am also going to try to up the radius on the bloom filter a bit, see what that gets me. Still, I am on my way. I am going to look into volumetrics a little more; it looks like that technique has a lot of useful applications.