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Light emitters

Sunfire

One Busy Little Bee
QAV-BEE
Contributing Artist
I know it is possible to make a whole figure light emitting in Poser (at least the newer versions), but is there a way to make a material zone on a figure or prop a light emitter?
 

seachnasaigh

Energetic
Yes; just make only the desired mat zone's material ambient.
You can even set only certain areas of a mat zone to glow by using a B&W mask to control whether it is ambient or not. You might look at the lava ground MAT from my freebie sampler materials for the P11 construct pack; the glowy lava areas are determined by a B&W mask, and you easily draw your own mask to make a different lava flow.;)
 

seachnasaigh

Energetic
Here is a render showing the lava ground, and the B&W mask which controls where the ground appears as lava:
Pauline fire sprite.jpg lava path mask 6.jpg
 

seachnasaigh

Energetic
On second thought, you might not want to work with the lava material, because the bump and tiling nodework is complicated.:oops:
But the control of what glows and what doesn't is pretty simple: areas of the B&W mask in white will glow, black areas will not. Grey areas will glow weakly.
 

Sunfire

One Busy Little Bee
QAV-BEE
Contributing Artist
So it uses the ambient node? I just want to make sure I'm clear on that.
 

seachnasaigh

Energetic
So it uses the ambient node? I just want to make sure I'm clear on that.
Yes; I'll try to make a simpler demo and post a material room screenshot.

In superfly, I usually add some nodes to get a better balance between the prop's apparent brightness and it's lightcasting strength. In Firefly, if I want that accurate balance, I use a second (unseen by camera) emitter prop to boost the lightcasting.

Are you going to do this with a prop of your own? If so, I'll show you how to set up the Firefly emitter prop. You have to be able to do some basic modeling to use the unseen emitter prop method.
 

seachnasaigh

Energetic
Material room screenshots!:D I made a B&W mask for the one by using a math node set to pow (power, or exponential function). So, even though the pink marble steps are a single mat zone, only the areas defined by the white part of the mask glows. Likewise for the door, except that has a mask image map.
glow controlled by mask ex1.jpg glow controlled by mask ex2.jpg

Note that these are dual-root; if you render in Superfly, then the glow boosting nodes are used, but if you render in Firefly, they are bypassed because Firefly can't read the Cycles LightPath node.

Test render is cooking now, I'll post it when it's done, so that you can see the effect.
 

Sunfire

One Busy Little Bee
QAV-BEE
Contributing Artist
Yes; I'll try to make a simpler demo and post a material room screenshot.

In superfly, I usually add some nodes to get a better balance between the prop's apparent brightness and it's lightcasting strength. In Firefly, if I want that accurate balance, I use a second (unseen by camera) emitter prop to boost the lightcasting.

Are you going to do this with a prop of your own? If so, I'll show you how to set up the Firefly emitter prop. You have to be able to do some basic modeling to use the unseen emitter prop method.

I might do so, use it on a prop of my own.
 

seachnasaigh

Energetic
OK, I asked because the hidden emitter technique requires making the emitter mesh which closely surrounds your visible prop. You can just set the prop itself to be ambient, but the lightcasting is weak; the results are much better with an unseen emitter. I'll make some screenshots of meshes, property settings, and materials.

Here is a Superfly render showing the result of using a mask to control which areas glow:
mask-controlled light emitter demo.jpg
 

seachnasaigh

Energetic
Here is the P9+ Firefly method. For this lightsabre, I import four OBJs:
  • non-luminous handle (metal, rubber), which will be set to cast shadows.
  • blade, which will be visible in camera, but not cast shadows
  • emitter, which will be set to be not visible in camera, nor cast shadows
  • aura, set to not cast shadows
Here is a cutaway view of the meshes; green is the visible blade, red is the unseen emitter and is closely fitted just outside of the blade mesh, and the ballooned-out blue mesh is the glow aura. The aura will not look that big when rendered because of the transparency falloff "halo" effect of the material to be applied.
Firefly IDL emitter mesh cutaway.png closeup of the inner blade surrounded by the emitter mesh Firefly IDL emitter mesh cutaway - closeup.png

Parent everything to the lightsabre handle prop.
The lightsabre handle will use the default properties:
property settings - lightsabre grip.PNG


The blade has casts shadows un-ticked:
property settings - lightsabre blade.PNG


The emitter has both casts shadows and visible in camera disabled; you see the effect (cast light) of the emitter, but you don't see the emitter itself:
property settings - lightsabre emitter.PNG


The glow aura has casts shadows shut off:
property settings - lightsabre aura.PNG
 

seachnasaigh

Energetic
Simple blade material; jack up the ambient value until the blade looks right:
blade material.PNG


The emitter should be the same color, but with considerably ambient value. Adjust this value so that the strength of light cast looks right; ignore the appearance of the emitter itself, since you'll only see the light it casts onto surrounding objects and not see the emitter itself.
emitter material.PNG


The glow aura "halo" effect is gained by daisy-chaining two edge_blend nodes. Feel free to adjust ambient value and the attenuation of the edge_blend nodes.
aura material.PNG


To render in P9+ Firefly, engage indirect light, set irradiance caching and indirect light quality to about 70, and give it 3 (or more) raytrace bounces. Be generous with the pixel samples. In P11, you set pixel samples to 100 and use progressive mode and cancel the render when it is satisfactory.
sample IDL Firefly render settings.PNG

demo renders:
lightsabre MkIId FF.jpg seach's lightsabre.jpg

Caveat: If viewed in reflection or through a refractive surface, the emitter will be visible.
You can text-edit the emitter PP2 prop file and set visible in reflection to 0, if that's within your skill set. I have no solution to offer for cases where the emitter is seen through a refractive surface, other than to avoid it.
 

Miss B

Drawing Life 1 Pixel at a Time
CV-BEE
Great stuff Seach! I've always wondered how you get those great glowing areas in your renders. :)
 
Vince Bagna just released SuperFly shaders in the RMP and one of those shaders for lights can turn objects into light emitters. I bought the bundle at 55% off with a coupon and it was well worth the money. I love his shaders!
 

Miss B

Drawing Life 1 Pixel at a Time
CV-BEE
I just checked, and mine was close to half price for the Bundle. There was a large discount, but I don't recall now what it was for.
 
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