Real Neon Signs

Comments

• felis Posts: 6,203

  April 14

  I don't have it.

  You can ask here https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/8001316/#Comment_8001316

   
• barbult Posts: 26,685

  April 14

  It sounds like you have the emission luminance set too high. Try lowering it a lot in the Surfaces pane.
• DrunkMonkeyProductions Posts: 1,224

  April 14 edited April 14

  The likely reason you're not able to get the "materials" to work, is because they aren't materai presets, they're shader presets.

  While people use the terms, material and shader, interchangeably they really shouldn't as they are different things.

  Materials include textures and change settings, shaders only change settings.

  To use the presets in the Materials folder, you'll need to select the proper surface, Core or Tube, in the Surfaces tab, and then click on the particular color setting you want to use.

   

  In regards to your "wash out" problem, as barbuit said, it's probably the luminance is too high for your render settings.

  When i was playing around with it, i had to take the luminance from the default 8,000,000 (at cd/m^2) down to 25000, on the Tube, and  and the core down from 1,000,000 to 5000 to get anything legible, 

  This was with more of a "night" setup, and with bloom filter enabled.

  Under default render settings, and outdoors, the defaults were fine, imho.

  How much you need to dial it down, will depend on your other lighting in the scene, render settings and what your intent in the image is.

   

   

   

   

   

  Post edited by DrunkMonkeyProductions on April 14
• Leana Posts: 13,041

  April 14 edited April 14

  DrunkMonkeyProductions said:

  Materials include textures and change settings, shaders only change settings.

  Shader presets can include textures too.

  The actual difference between a material preset and a shader preset is the following:

  • A material presets includes one or multiple sets of surface settings, and each of them is intended to be applied to a specific surface identified by its name. For example a material preset applying a skin will typically include different surface settings for head, body, limbs... You select an figure, apply the preset, and it will apply the "body" settings to the "body" surface if there's one, same for "head" and so on for all the named surfaces the preset has settings for. If the figure you have selected doesn't have any of the surfaces included in the preset, it won't do anything.
  • A shader preset includes a single set of surface settings, which can be applied to any surface. When you apply it you need to select both the figure and the surfaces you want to apply the settings to, and it will apply the same set of surface settings to all selected surfaces.

   

  Post edited by Leana on April 14
• DrunkMonkeyProductions Posts: 1,224

  April 14

  Leana said:

  DrunkMonkeyProductions said:

  Materials include textures and change settings, shaders only change settings.

  Shader presets can include textures too.

  The actual difference between a material preset and a shader preset is the following:

  • A material presets includes one or multiple sets of surface settings, and each of them is intended to be applied to a specific surface identified by its name. For example a material preset applying a skin will typically include different surface settings for head, body, limbs... You select an figure, apply the preset, and it will apply the "body" settings to the "body" surface if there's one, same for "head" and so on for all the named surfaces the preset has settings for. If the figure you have selected doesn't have any of the surfaces included in the preset, it won't do anything.
  • A shader preset includes a single set of surface settings, which can be applied to any surface. When you apply it you need to select both the figure and the surfaces you want to apply the settings to, and it will apply the same set of surface settings to all selected surfaces.

   

  Thanks for the correction.

  In simplest terms, Material presets are tied to specific surfaces, shader presets are not.

   
• garrett_3d Posts: 137

  April 14

  Thanks all, I shall have a play with settings.

  I still have the issue of using the supplied colours not working - I tried changing the CORE then the shader but everything remains default colour. I shall try the commercial thread. Thanks again.
• raven Posts: 27

  April 16

  Here's a quick scene I set up to hopefully help with getting the neon to change colour. I loaded all the numbers from the library and postioned them against the wall.

  For number 1, this is the default as it loads.

  In the materials folder for this product there are shader settings for both the parts of a neon object, the core, and the tube.

  For number 2, in the surfaces tab, I only selected Neon_Core and used the RNS CORE Green material on it.

  For number 3, in the surfaces tab, I only selected Neon_Tube and used the RNS TUBE Green material on it.

  For number 4, in the surfaces tab, I applied both materials to the respective parts which now gives a fully green neon number.

  Hope this helps with changing the colours.

  
  To help with overpowering the background you can try just taking a zero off of the luminance value in the Tube Emission settings, that's all I did in the second picture.

  Also, if you have Bloom enabled in the render settings, that is another variable to play with (I didn't have bloom enabled in these pics).

  

  

  neon test 01.jpg

  600 x 578 - 163K

  

  

  neon test 02.jpg

  600 x 577 - 133K
• garrett_3d Posts: 137

  April 16

  Thanks for the quick tutorial, I have since had a play about and gotten some workable results.

  

  

  Garrett 3D Neon_2.jpg

  3200 x 3200 - 6M
• raven Posts: 27

  April 16

  Glad it helped :)