How to create a glow effect in Arnold for Maya or change render engine?

#1


Hello people,
I’ve been working my ass off looking all over the Internet trying to get a way to create a glow effect in Arnold for Maya 2018 like as using special effect or surface shaded in MR and Maya software render. I understand that Arnold doesn’t have that feature and for my next scene, I’m seriously considering going back to Mental Ray… Cuz I’ve used Emission and mesh light but they don’t glow, they only self-illuminate and reflect light on other materials. I tried that atmosphere thingy in Arnold settings but, didn’t work like I wanted and it also affected all the lights in my scene.
Is there a way I can achieve this or do I have to go back to MR? It is just two to three clicks away in MR.
Above are picture examples of how Arnold emission and mesh light show (bottom) and how I want it to show (top)

I’d be glad also if you people can suggest a better render engine that offers more support for Maya library materials than Arnold. I wonder why people hold Arnold to a high esteem. I’ve been having problems with it since I started using it. MR has more tutorials and easier to use (maybe it’s just me) apart from the disadvantage of longer render times. But I would gladly overlook that if going back to it would make my life easier.

Thanks

#2

Well, most glow effects are post effects even if you can use then within a renderer. The huge disadvantage is that you have a fixed burn in glow and you cannot manipulate it afterwards. So the most efficient way to produce glow is to use a compositng package or for stills something like photoshop.

One reason why MtoA does not put too much effort in translating default maya materials is that they simply do not fit into a physically based rendering environment because they are not energy conserving at all.

But if you can work better and faster with Mentalray, do it. There is no reason to switch to a more “modern” renderer if it is more complicated for you. And as far as my experience goes, Arnold is not faster than mentalray in most cases, but much more reliable.

#3

Thanks for your response. I’m doing an animation of a football match and so, the lights would kinda follow all through the animation and I think doing that in post would take a whole lot of work If it could be achieved.
Anyways, I got Vray demo yesterday to see how good it is because I heard mental ray would go extinct anytime soon as it is claimed that Nvidia would no more release additional update for it (I don’t know how true). I don’t wanna be using time to learn a software then, instead of making progress.

Have you used Vray before? What do you think, would Vray be a good contending alternative or would it be better to stick to my initial plan of going back to my preferred render engine?

#4

in vray its also a post effect… but vray does add it for you…
same could be done in arnold and nuke or fusion… its really easy todo…

#5

And in nuke/fusion/aftereffects, it is 1 or two mouseklicks. Just adda glow node. I suppose that’s not very much work.

#6

Could you please show me how to do it?

#7

Could you please show me how to do it in Arnold? Point me to a tutorial, write me short note or anything

#8

For stills yes. For moving frames, I don’t think it’s that easy. I saw a tutorial where someone pulled it off but, the glow was kinda hovering

#9

if you know photoshop its asy to work with after effects…
here an basic glow tutorial…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VB-MKEjao3s

you wont need todo the roto by hand… just use a rendermask…

or use a luminance glow… everthing above the brightness 1 does glow…
cause you render to EXR files its just one click…

#10

Funny I just came across this some minutes back…
Thanks a lot for your help and patience

#11

Since you like mray it seems, why dont you try iray for maya.
It does have beautiful bloom effect

#12

Yea, I guess it’s because I’ve been using it for more than 3 years and I switched to Arnold just 4-5 months back. You’d understand why.

Thanks for your suggestion, I’m gonna check that out too