Let the light go through the material

Hi!

Im trying to create an LCD monitor or at least something like that. I wanted to create it’s leds but I could not create a material that let the light go through.
How can I create an object that seems to be lighting?

vargadanis,

In materials…shaders tab…bottom right, there is an “Emit” slider. Try that.

Best of Luck!!

No, don’t do that. :smiley:

Emit will actually emit, but it’s not going to give you the effect you want. Well, I don’t know for sure what effect you’re going for, but Emit is more useful as a fill light situation than a source of illumination for a thing.

Now, as with lights. For an LCD monitor usually you position a rectangular area light, and map a “screenshot” image as a lighting texture, but reversed, and it looks like it’s shining out, illuminating the nearby area like the keyboard and desk, etc.

BTW, LCD monitors and LEDS? Huh? :confused:You mean like the power on indicator, I take it? Stick a lamp inside it with a really really short falloff, and make the LED a glass or really translucent box.

Pictures being worth… whatever they’re worth. Note there are 3 shadows from the cup, the scene light above, but also each monitor… I made the table more reflective than is normal to clearly show the light casting of the texture (called projector in any other 3D program, but hey this is Blender!) :smiley:

http://img119.imageshack.us/img119/2193/dualmonitor18gt.jpg

http://img104.imageshack.us/img104/5193/dualmonitorblenderrender6iu.jpg

Wov…
I got it… I have alredy done several case study with emit function and I like it. But area lights… I havent heared about them till now… I will check what are they good for… Thanx for your advice.

One more thing… have you added the screenshots after you had created the 3D objects with a photo editing program or during the creation?

No, I’m sorry, I guess I didn’t explain well.

The screenshots are used twice. Once as a texture map on the faces of the “monitor”, and those are set to emit about 0.3 I think, just enough to make them look like backlit LCDs… emit makes things glow brighter, like they are giving off light, but they do not light up a scene as a real light source does. (nor can you adjust them other than the Emit slider.)

But you use the same screenshot again, on the area light, as a texture. The area light then projects the image outward, like, well, like a projector. Or a real monitor. This scene is over-exaggerated to make a point on how it’s done, but I guess I should have worded it better.

Does this make sense?

edit: also, BTW, never follow any of my tips if you’re a low-poly Game Engine user/modeller. I don’t do that. I frequently have scenes go over 1 hour per frame at render, on a fast dual core machine, and eat up a gig or two of RAM rendering a couple million polygons. I have zero use for the GE at this point. Blender is many things to many people. :smiley:

Could you explain more how to do the monitor lighting part?