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kyphur
11-21-2002, 01:13 AM
I need to have an object emit light from its surface without using the glow feature. I have reflective surfaces and since glow is a post affect Maya's renderer doesn't recognize the object glowing in the reflections (DoH!). I've tried pumping a light node into the color and incandesence but that's not working (atleast not that I'm noticing).

Any ideas or suggestions are welcome and greatly appreciated.

Kyph

Why is it the simple things that always slow me down?
Ckerr812
11-21-2002, 02:21 AM
use a reflection map, instead of raytracing.
kyphur
11-21-2002, 02:42 AM
I've already thought about that but the scene is way too intense for that. 50+ mirrors and many more dynamic shapes.

Kyph
empleh
11-21-2002, 03:07 AM
What exactly do you mean by "emit light"? Do you mean that you want it to illuminate it's surroundings like a neon light would?

ww
kyphur
11-21-2002, 03:12 AM
Yeah, pretty much. I can't use a post effect though. I thought I had found it through the luminance utility node but apparently it's a post effect too. :annoyed:

I'm thinking that maybe I could fake it by making a torus and making a shader that looks like a colored, frosted glass deal and just shoving a bunch of lights into it and making their source visible.

Why is Val Kilmer doing nikon commercials now and he's afraid of digital cameras??

Sorry, distracted.

Anyways,

Kyph
empleh
11-21-2002, 03:37 AM
That's tough. Times like this make you wish for GI don't they? I'm sure there is a good fake out there, maybe you could paint a map of how you want the light to fall and project that as the color of a single light.

I'm too tired to do better.

Good luck.
empleh
11-21-2002, 01:46 PM
Out of the box maya can not turn geometry into a lightsource, at least not a volume lightsource like you want. You could probably write a pluging if you wanted one bad enough but I think it would be incredibly slow. When you are solving for a point you have to check that point agains each light in the scene to find the angle and distance between, the intensity of the light, and to see if the light is occluded. This takes long enought if you are using lights with a point source like spotlights or point lights. If you had a volume like a box emiting light you would have to do lots of samples of that box to see if the box is partially occluded and to represent any variations in color or intensity over that surface. That's pretty much how radiosity works. And it is slowwwww.

Good luck
ww
Ckerr812
11-21-2002, 01:55 PM
Originally posted by kyphur
I've already thought about that but the scene is way too intense for that. 50+ mirrors and many more dynamic shapes.

Kyph

hmm..that's a tough one, try this then, is this kinda what your looking for, it's just a quick scene I did in 2 minutes, it's just a lamp, emiting light and reflections. ?

Here is the scene file..It's not to complicated, but of course if you have 50 mirrors, that's a pretty complicated scene :P

http://www.naturallydigital.ca/images/Forums/cgtalk/lighttesting.mb

http://www.naturallydigital.ca/images/Forums/cgtalk/lighttest.jpg
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