Lightsaber aura?
isidorn
Posts: 1,601
Not sure if this is the correct forum section, but my problem seems somewhat technical and I need help with it.
I'm working on a render (in Iray) that includes the http://www.daz3d.com/siph-queen and I'm using the provided red lightsaber blade material for Iray. Sadly, in the finished render the lighsabers looks mostly like some lightsaber toys in plastics. I'm obviously missing something. What do I need to do to get the glowy aura around the blade, as seen in the promo pictures? Is it even possible to do "in-render" or does it require photoshopping?
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Comments
if you want the glow effect this would be my approach on it.
select the beam (in daz) and under the surfaces/ iray shaders set it to emissive..luminance to kcd/m2 at 100 luminence and with cutout opacity to .25 and under emission color change it to the color you want.
this is where the photoshop comes in...
create new layer
when in photoshop select a soft brush about half the diameter of the lightsaber beam click on the brush color editor but instead of selecting a color from the pane, select the layer of your render.. mouse over to the lightsaber (you should see the mouse turn into an eyedropper) click to select that as the color.
now to draw a perfect line within the lightsaber,( while in the new layer) click the beam base....while holding the shift key click the top of the beam (you chould now have a straight line within the beam the same color of it.
doube click the layer of the brush stroke and navigate to outer glow and adjust to your liking.
(hope this helps)
My apologies, I should have mentioned that I do not have Photoshop.
And I have been hoping to avoid it for now as I've never used it before and my brain is getting overheated just by trying to figure out how things work in DAZ. But maybe it's unavoidable?
Anyway, much thanks for the reply. I'll certainly keep it in mind if I change my mind and decide to get photoshop.
You don't need Photoshop...any decent image editing program will do it...The GIMP, Krita and othes.
If you want to do it strictly in the rendering, you'll need a volumetric camera. Luckily, This can be found in Age of Armor's Atmospheric Effects Cameras. I don't know how well they wprk with IRAY, but glows like you're looking for is one of the main purposes of the volumetric camera.
No, they don't work in Iray...but...
RawArt has this on his dA page.
http://rawart3d.deviantart.com/art/Raw-FogCam-535959358
Another forum member had a similar question in this thread, and fellow Forum member Tobor provided what seems to be just the solution you're looking for. You might want to try that solution as well.
Yeah, bloom is another way of adding some glow...
Thanks for all the replies! I saw that thread about bloom and actually tried it. The problem with that is that I have a busy scene and so much more than I wanted got "aura-fied" and I'm not sure how well it worked on the lightsabers. Never finished the render as the scene takes about 2 hours to render for me so I canceled when I saw how much else that became wrong.
RawArt's fog thing seems similar to Jepe's products here on this site and I have a couple of those. Perhaps there's something in there than can be used for the lightsaber aura? I didn't think of that even though I'm using both some fog and fire already in the scene. I'll have to take a look.
Or I'll have to bite the bullet and start looking into image editing programs. I'm bound to do that sooner or later anyway, just hoping it wouldn't have to be sooner as I still have so much to learn about DAZ.
Thanks again for all the help. Now I'm off to work!
If too much is blooming, try increasing the luminance of the emission surface, and knock down the settings of the bloom filter. That might help isolate the effect to just the lighted portion. I did this with a creepy robot so that only its red eyes glowed. I wanted to keep the details of the other textures, such as the gleaming metal of its positronic actuators.
The alternative is to most use any of the fog examples talked about here over the last few months. You use a primitive (Create->New Primitive, and choose something like Cylinder), apply the Iray Uber surface to it, and then use it to contain a "glow." Fog, glow, aura -- kinda all the same when it comes down to it.
There is one other method using canvases and selective rendering of objects, but this is fairly involved. You will need a graphics program to combine the separate glowed image with the rest of your scene. I would take mjc's suggestion and give The GIMP (software, not the pitiful character from Pulp Fiction) a try.
(Of course the easiest method is just to draw it in using Photoshop or GIMP. You know that all of the re-fabricated Star Wars had their light sabers digitally rotoscoped to enhance the original effect. There's no sin in post work.)
Depending on the construction of the lightsaber, I'd probably use a geometry shell and scale it up, instead of using a cylinder. That way it would keep the contours.
Thanks again for all the help and suggestions! I've managed to find a solution that will have to do for now, even if it's not perfect. I'll experiment with the suggestions given here and I may even go have a look at that GIMP to be prepared for future renders. :)
The result can be seen in my gallery now.
That is a smaller version of it.Looks good. The flames do obscure the lightsaber blade a bit too much, but, from what I could see of it, youve done a great job.