Hi, I’m trying to create a neonlight effect. I have been able to do so up to a certain point. I managed to create this;
It look alright but I had to put alot of efford in to this relatively simple scene. What I did was create a tube and make it luminesent and somewhat transparent. Next I put an mash in the tube, subdivided it a lot of times and made it an halo. After that I put a whole bunch of lights inside the tube.
My final gole is to make some Arabic text seem luminesent like neon lights. To think of the work I would have to put in to that happening using the same technique makes my tired alraigdy.
So my question is, can I create a similer effect in an more labor effective way? What if I want to make somethink like this;
The above image is, of course not mine, just got it somewhere of the web.
Thanks in advance…
That second image has a radiosity feel about it. Try setting the emit value of the tube non-zero and turn on radiosity in the render panel. In the radiosity section, set the iterations to about 400 and render.
For the glow effect, it’s better to do post-process - Maya does it that way. So try the sequence editor that was mentioned. You can also try GIMP:
On every object, especially the ground or larger objects, in editbuttons turn on Subsurf, set it to simple and as high as you think you can stand.
Then on every material turn on Radio, also turn it on in renderbuttons (F10)
Then on the neon tube material turn up the Emit value.
Add some halos for good measure.
Hit render.
Put the coffee machine on.
Wait a while.
I had an explination of how I would do this some time ago
it is pretty simple too, and demonstrates a blender bug
so, you have the curve as a path for a sphere lamp going at a constant speed
this lamp is a sphere lamp of the color of your neon light
and you turn on dupliverts so you get a bunch of them
the blender limit for RENDERED lamps is 256, so you will very easily reach that limit
but, it is doubtful your neon lighting changes that much anyway, so here is what you do
you make the dupliframed lamps real with shift+control+a
move them to another layer preverably
subdivide the surfaces you want lit a fair amount
make it so only your neon lamp lights are visible, in addition to your meshes [so, no other visible lamps]
go into shaded (control+z) mode and tweak the lighting to your liking
then, press the make vertex colors button: http://home.earthlink.net/~nwinters99/temp/lightmap_final.png
finally, press the vcol light button in your material options
these days you could probably use a high emit on the neon tube and use radiosity, but it would be unnecescarily bright when looked at directly
[that and it depends a lot on your face size, the emit slider may not go high enough]
