Help with a glow texture in Maya

Lynchpin

Hello All,
I am building a sci fi cryo chamber in Maya. I would like the texture to be metal yet have the buttons and detail pieces glow. I did a quick test (with unfinished textures), where I plugged the diffuse into the color of a Blinn, and a Alpha of the buttons into the Glow Intensity under Special Effects. This causes the buttons to glow but then I cannot adjust the Glow Intensity. Any ideas? Am I doing this correctly?

radiancef0rge

are you aiming for a bloom effect in the viewport?
Keep in mind VP2.0 does not have a bloom post process, if you increase the intensity the glow map will just go white

Lynchpin

I want to lessen the bloom of the glow. I will post a pic to show you what is happening.

Lynchpin

Don't judge my crap textures, it was just a quick glow test. LOL.

Lynchpin

This is the texture in Maya with only the diffuse and the alpha in the glow intensity. I would like the glow bloom to be a lot less. This is a quick render on the lowest settings to do the test.

rube

What does your alpha look like? If you're using that to control the Glow then darkening that should lower the glow intensity. You could also separate the pieces you want to glow and give them a material of their own, then you can just manually adjust the glow intensity. What I would do though is do the glow in post, maya's glow feature is not very good.

Lynchpin

Rube,
I think you are right and just do it in post. I will probably just import this into UDK anyway, I was just thinking ahead.

My alpha is just the outline of the UV's I want to glow in White. Everything else is in Black. I thought that same thing about lowering the Alpha to a gray tone and it did not change the bloom. I guess Maya's glow feature does suck.

Thanks,