Rendering lightning bolts and similar in iRay

allan_2239099

Can anyone advise me on how to render lightning bolts, glowing lamps and so forth using i\Ray? I already get perfect results using 3Dlight but so far I've failed miserably with iRay (and Reality also). Yes, I'm new so please, if possible, keep explanations simple. Thanks in anticipation

SickleYield

Pick the object you want to glow.

Apply the Uber Iray Base Shader from the Shader Presets/Iray folder.

Go to Surfaces tab and scroll down to Emission on the surface you want to glow. Set the emission color to white.

Set the emission level to an appropriate one for your render settings - a sun light at default tone mapping needs to be at around a million lumens, where a little magic object may not need more than 500.

Now it should cast light when you render.

allan_2239099

Thank you SickleYield for your helpful reply. I tried your suggestions but alas they only resulted in partial success. Obviously there is more or I'm still doing something wrong. I've attached an image I made using iRay for the background and 3Delight for the lightning bolt in the foreground then added the two (separate) images together in good old Paint Shop Pro. You can see the effect I'm trying to get, the subtle shadows of iRay (or Reality) and the smeared effect of 3Delight. My goal is to achieve the whole thing in iRay or Reality because even 'though lightning is producing lots of light, there are also shadows if other (external) lights are present. Can you please help me with this or at least direct me to the appropriate literature. So far all I've managed to read is a lot of irrelevant text.
Thanks
Allan A.

SickleYield

Check that your camera headlamp is off in parameters?

allan_2239099

Yep! That's usually the first thing I check. I'm pretty confident that only the lights I want on are on.