Rendered completely in blender 2.49…
nah I’m joking it’s cycles, my first cycles actually :RocknRoll: I know it is very noisy, it only went through 80 passes, but I just wanted to see how awesome cycles was, and indeed it appears to be very awesome indeedy 
I’m wondering, why is the wire in the lamp solid white?
Good question, that is because i could not get an emitting object to have any colour except a colour on the very edge of the colour wheel, which makes it look ridiculous. And a plain filament was boring 
Question=answered
EDIT: btw any ideas on how to do it would be greatly appreciated
Why would it be any other color then a simple glossy material?
Reasons:
The lamp is OFF.
But if you really want to make it shine, add an emmit shader and make it very powerful. Then use Photoshop to make it halo.
I think this is one of the most realistic models I’ve seen yet!
Thank you for your kind words, I am in the process of rendering a noise free version, ill update this thread when it is done
Either way is fine
A slightly changed version, I prefer the grungier feeling this image has, let me know what you think
You can fake it with “lamps” near filament ? rather making the glowing filament ?
afraid lamps don’t work with cycles as of yet 
very nice!!!
i think i like the first one better though, it has a very cool feel. especially with the filament really bright.
but one thing i have to ask… this wasnt an internal render was it 
Very nicely done. I prefer the second render as well. The only critique I can come up with for the second one is maybe the IOR for the glass. It makes it feel like the glass is slightly too thick.
I’d love to have the .blend file to give it a try in Octane.
Believe in the power of cycles my friend, it was all internal, this is what blender will be capable as a standard soon when it is finished development. I downloaded a test from GraphicAll.com. You should give it a try, i followed a tutorial on Blender Cookie to get me started 
@ephdot
And i have attached a .blend file for you
Light Bulb.blend (830 KB)
does this mean blender is finally a great internal rendering system such as something like… idk, yafaray powers?:eek:
Two lights went out at my office, can I use these?
I have them working perfectly…
They may not have an actual “size” as such but they still work. I just used that with an emit material on the filament that wasn’t massively strong. Gets a nice look I think. (BTW I am talking about my one, that I posted approx. 2 weeks ago. Havn’t tried yours yet…)
From the moment you posted this i had a feeling something was wrong and the .blend file concludes it. Your light bulbs are completely solid glass! I think you need to acquaint yourself with the Solidify modifier to turn a heavy glass blob into a fragile glass bubble with room inside for air. And even then, dont make it too thick, if you’ve ever broken a bulb the glass is incredibly light and thin. There should be almost no refraction except around the very edges.
This is with solidify, not sure if i think it looks better although it is more physically accurate
Don’t you think it looks like a monochrome pic? You may try to change the background!
Your model looks nice, I like the slight bend in the wires holding the filament. The third render looks best in my opinion, since it looks most realistic (I agree with the previous poster about the IOR being too high on the other ones).
The glass looks slightly tinted, was that the way your reference was?
I am actually working on a lightbulb myself, am trying to render it with a glass layer on the outside with layer of phosphorus (or whatever the white coating on the inside of incandescents is), but it keeps showing up black (the depth is set high and I have tried scaling the whole bulb…who knows).
Your base material looks nicer than mine too
