Not a good idea, the laser looks like a solid blue plastic stick if you do that. We need the chromatic attenuation.
I would challenge your view on that with this:
The classic star wars light saber has white core and chromatic glows around it, and we still percieve them as blue and red light beams.
Which one would you rather see?
Thanks for your input. I must admit, in direct comparison I would definitly rather choose the beam with the white core, as it looks more energetic, as if the core was so powerfull and highly photon emitting that it almost blinds you.
The question though would be: would this also work infront of a white background? Given my limited experience I must say: I donât know. I could image though that it would work, as the blue fog around it could act like a sort of frame and therefor create a clear border to the white background.
What would a shader like that look like?
When you say white, does it need to be your monitorâs maximum emission? (1.0, 1.0, 1.0)
Letâs think about this, the blue emission from the monitor is not going to be the max emission, itâs almost guaranteed to not work, unless you do some kind of perceptual lightness trick, like how on the freeway they put black surrounds around white strikes to increase contrast:
But putting the trick here doesnât quite make sense:
What I am seeing here is a white core surrounded by darker blues that gradually become the brighter white.
Itâs still better than a solid blue stick though:
If the âwhiteâ you are referring to doesnât have to be maximum monitor emission, then of course it works:
We just need to think in terms of the luminance relationship here, is the background as bright as the laser? Or is the laser darker than the background? Or should the laser be brighter than the background? Basically figure-ground relationship.
Just basic emission with volumetric lighting/glare node, plus a good view transform that has proper chromatic attenuation, such as ARRI Reveal, AgX, etc.
Filmic has some attenuation in place but doesnât go all the way:
If the background is pure white, the glare node wonât work as itâs additive in nature. You would have to somehow color correct the glow to be darker than the background.
Maybe it would be possible to make a material with a glowing core surrounded by a dark fog. Here is an attempt (however, it works only as a cylinder shape and loses its look under certain angles).
laser_material.blend (919.7 KB)
This looks like a cyan solid metal tube to me. The idea of trying to make it glow against a maximum-monitor-pixel-emission background just doesnât quite make sense. The âtubeâ cannot have more emission intensity than the background, since itâs already the maximum of the display medium.
Indeed itâs not truly possible to do, and it would not work with a real camera either.
I am trying to find a compromise here, a stylized visual that can convey the idea.
Thanks everyone. I thought about this a bit further and would like to make a compromise that I didnât plan on doing. However, as it makes sense that there canât be anything whiter/more glowing than a simple white monitor, I would like to add a coloured plane (orange in this case) behind the laser. It will act as a sort of âoverlayâ to the plain white powerpoint slide and hopefully give the laser some âoomphâ from the background.
Iâll have to experiment now with the shader suggestions you made @Eary_Chow. Given the HSV-Value of the Orange already is 0.846874, the Laser will have to be above that right?
I donât remember suggesting any shader, what I said was that a simple emission with glare, and then make sure you use a better view transform that has proper chromatic attenuation, instead of âStandardâ. Then you can set the layser emission to be higher than 1.0, some tens or even hundreds. Then the view transform will do the job for you, it will automatically give you the white core and make it look good.
Given a better view transform, you most likely wonât need to worry about that.\
(EDIT: I wrote something about color mixing, but then realize itâs not a diffuse background, nevermind about that then.)
Thanks. I followed the settings and somehow mine looks totally different, even when even when adapting your glare Settings. This is what the render looks like:
Settings:
I didnât have the aGX optionen and downloaded one from youtube, but it doesnât seem to match the one you have. Also, it strongly affects the colour of the orange background, which I want to avoid. Any tipps here?
I was using the GPU compositor feature. The glare setting is bit different in GPU compositor.
The YT videos are about the initial version, I have submitted it to Blender devs but they still donât have time to do a proper review just yet.
BTW when it comes to layser representation in an image, it prehaps makes more sense to have a darker environment and have objects be illuminated, like how you would turn off the lamps when blowing birthday candles.
I downloaded the pack, but I donât see a colormanagement folder, and the search wouldnât find anything - am I blind?
Regarding the darker environment: I will fiddle around a bit with the input you gave me. If Iâm still not satisfied witht the glow on the orange background, I might use a black one, although I would really want to avoid that as I already made a compromise on the orange one.
The link I posted was already showing the folder though?
Just suggesting thatâs what most people would see these sort of lighting in.
I donât know about the actual use case of your image so itâs up to you.
Thanks again, I finally managed to download the Agx LUTs and experiment with them a bit. Iâm really getting there in terms of what Laser I want to achieve. One new problem I am having though:
The chosen view transform expectedly also affects every other object in the scene. While the laser looks great with it, the either orange or black background for example looks âwashed outâ and not just âuni/plainâ as I would like it to. Is there any way to compensate for this? Can a view transform (although the name implies otherwise) somehow also be applied to just one object?
Maybe you can try the Guard Rail view transform. Itâs supposed to be a âStandardâ but with chromatic attenuation.
It made things better, not quite there:
The white background is supposed to be starch white, the black pitch black. Worst case I could do witht the background, but not the washed out black which is fading expecially around the corners.
Seems to be the glare node glowing the white background, maybe try highering the threshold setting.
That made things better, neither the white background nor the black overlay are now blending into each other anymore. But they are still not binary in colour, more like this:
The white Background and the black overlay are both Emission-Shaders with Intensity â1^â, as I had good experience with this in a previous project. However, they do not return 0, see here for the white:
And the black:
