Looking for help in creating UV/"black light" effect in 3DSMax

[googlo]

Use a raytrace material and play with the flourescence and flourescence bias options in the extended parameters rollout.

[gnarlycranium]

Hey, I've been wondering about this one too!

Originally posted by googlo
Use a raytrace material and play with the flourescence and flourescence bias options in the extended parameters rollout.

I gave up on trying that method a while ago because it just didn't seem to give the right effect-- it makes things glow when they're in shadow, but that's it. We need a black LIGHT, as in a light that brings out the flourescence of everything it's pointed at. I have yet to see any method or plugin for this....

[Projectkmo]

ok, I had a few ideas floating around in my head..But...they all sort of depend on the situation...by that I mean..
what is the scene....what is/are the objects you want to have the Light pass over...do those objects have multiple materials on them etc...

I picture in my head a simple test ....a box sitting on a plane (floor) with the Light (colored to look like a Black light) passing over the object....I imagine the light would be larger than the object such that you would see a Line of light creep across the object as it crosses it and lights it up....you would have to animate your lone texture on the box to change in synche with the light (oh god... I said In Sync...my bad) which would be a pain...and you will prolly have more than One Texture anyway.....making it even harder.

the best thing I thought of...or what I think might be easiest, is to render the scene twice....one with the original and one with the Blacklit look.... then composite the two...though that would be a bit of work as well...it might lead to learning a new software....

after all my rambling.. I look forward to what solution the good folks here come up with.

[lostfilez]

I messed around w/ it a bit this afternoon and rendered out a few pictures... lemme know if this is somewhat what you're going for.

Spotlight crossing over the scene...

http://stu.aii.edu/~mh249/blacklight2.jpg

http://stu.aii.edu/~mh249/blacklight3.jpg

http://stu.aii.edu/~mh249/blacklight4.jpg

1 omni light for scene...

http://stu.aii.edu/~mh249/blight.jpg

Sorry, gotta run now, I'll post back later tonight for explanation.

[ryamkajr]

Lostfilez,

Yes, that is similar enough to the action that I want to occur, which I can handle very well.

What I am trying to recreate with light/texturing/compositing (whichever method proves simplest or makes the most sense), is the effect shown in the attached image. This is a cropped portion of an image I got at Renderosity by an artist called "Shelli in black". His/her permission was not obtained to post this, but this is the best that I can get to show...

As I mentioned, I know Max pretty well, at least from the modelling side. It's lighting side that I am trying to learn.

Oops. Left out the part about I want certain parts of the texture to "glow" when the light passes over it.

Thanks.

[Kev3D]

I guess a relatively easy way to create that effect would be to create two lights; a ver dark one and a very bright one. Just let the Bright light only include the bits that you want to glow

[Kev3D]

Here's a test render of my idea on an old model of a robot.

I guess my idea wouldn't work so well if you wanted to have different bits of texture lighting up.

[Rurouni]

i think you can use raytrace mat. in raytrace mat > extended paramaters, there's a flourescence setting. change the flourescence color to something like white and make it slightly bluish/purpleish. just tweak it until you got the right color. it works (i think) like self illumination but it only illuminate when it receive light.
for the light, just use light with a low multiplier.

if your scene only contains black light, that setting is enough. but if the scene contains normal light, well... object that use that mat would still look like self illuminated object.

cheers

-Frans

[Rurouni]

sample pic

[gnarlycranium]

This is what the user reference in MAX says about the Flourescence settings and what they supposedly do:
Fluorescence and Fluor. Bias: Creates an effect similar to black light on a black light poster. The light from a black light is largely ultraviolet, outside the visible spectrum. Under black light, fluorescent paints flare or glow. The fluorescence in Raytrace material takes whatever light it sees in the scene, applies the Bias to it, and then, regardless of the color of the lights in the scene, illuminates the fluorescent material as if it were lit by white light.
Now, I dunno about you people... but that really doesn't make much sense to me. I also fail to see how it could simulate a blacklight effect. It says it 'looks at whatever light it sees in the scene', which seems kinda contradictory to what we're going for here.

The only way to get an actual blacklight effect would have to be something that involves the black LIGHT itself, not just the material. A light that illuminates only certain -colors- when it's pointed at them, and illuminates them in different hues than they look under any other light. I have gotten the flourescence setting to make things look self-illuminated when they're in shadow, but that's it.

[ryamkajr]

Thanks, all, for the responses to date.

I managed to drag myself to the office today to grab the manuals and bring them home for the extended weekend. I will look up the refs made earlier and check them out.

By all means, keep posting ideas and recommednations. I am getting new ideas from your recommendations. Hopefully I will be able to start posting samples of my WIP to show the effectes I have managed.

- Ray

[Rurouni]

in real world i think to create that black light effect, we need two components: uv light and phosphor. the phosphor in the object will make it look flourescent under the uv light.
now... if only we can make certain lights reacts to certain material (not object) in max....

well, that just my thoughts. i hope someone else have a better solution to this black light effect.

-Frans

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