Emission map.. or glow...

conte

http://www.t3h-v.com/WIP/CORUM_SUBMITION/corum_textures.jpg
What is this emission texture and how it works???
May i do something like this?

KRakarth

emissive details how much light the model emits or glows, as you correctly guessed. with no exterior lighting the emissive shows what "lights up"

MoP

if you're using 3dsmax, put your glow map in the self-illumination slot and tick the "color" checkbox next to that in the material editor, and any areas that aren't black on your texture will glow. The brighter the colour on the glow map, the more obvious it will be.

conte

Mop, thank you very much...

pixeldamage

Thing with emission maps vs Self Illumination is that I find you don't get that glow effect on adjacent geommetry in max. I'm sure this is most likely due to render settings /Indirect Illumination but am unsure how I can make a symbol that is glowing on a tablet light the adjacent surfaces of said tablet. The symbol is a mask on a blend material .... if i were to do this in unreal the effect would look pretty much like i'd like. Anyone know how to do this in max / mental ray? maybe a light with the mask as a filter?

cw

AFAIK if using mental ray and an salf illumination is there it will shine, may need to beef up the output of the self illum. though to get it to do anything.

SHEPEIRO

pixeldamage wrote: »

Thing with emission maps vs Self Illumination is that I find you don't get that glow effect on adjacent geommetry in max. I'm sure this is most likely due to render settings /Indirect Illumination but am unsure how I can make a symbol that is glowing on a tablet light the adjacent surfaces of said tablet. The symbol is a mask on a blend material .... if i were to do this in unreal the effect would look pretty much like i'd like. Anyone know how to do this in max / mental ray? maybe a light with the mask as a filter?

add a glow to the post fx

Mark Dygert

pixeldamage wrote: »

Thing with emission maps vs Self Illumination is that I find you don't get that glow effect on adjacent geommetry in max. I'm sure this is most likely due to render settings /Indirect Illumination but am unsure how I can make a symbol that is glowing on a tablet light the adjacent surfaces of said tablet. The symbol is a mask on a blend material .... if i were to do this in unreal the effect would look pretty much like i'd like. Anyone know how to do this in max / mental ray? maybe a light with the mask as a filter?

Self Illum won't cast light in any rendering engine that doesn't bounce light, so scanline alone doesn't work.
But scanline set to use an advanced rendering plug-in like Radiosity or Light Tracer will work. Mental Ray with Final Gather I think will bounce light and glow materials will cast light on adjacent surfaces. If you google neon glow there will be 2-3 ways to get it done using different techniques all can be mapped/masked.

Just to be clear, this is what you're after right?

pixeldamage

Yes Vig that's kinda what i was looking for. The kind of look you'd get in Indiana Jones on a glowing symbol to give that mystical/enchanted look that might even light the character's faces. I tried doing it in post by using blur in AfterFX but it only gave me a fake look (though i don't use it much so it's probably possible that way too). I actually only had an afternoon to work on that piece but its good to know better ways of achieving that kind of look. I'm sure something awesome could be done with realtime shaders too (like in final fantasy xii's battles) particle effects etc but that's a coding route that i have no knowledge of but would like to learn one day....

The main issue i was having with my tablet is that it was rendered from above and there was nothing else for it to illuminate except itself so it was hard getting the right look. I've attached a pic of my early attempt

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3647139/tablet.png

SHEPEIRO

again might be helpfull for that bloom effect

Mark Dygert

^ Yea if you want a bit of glow/bloom at render time and you're using scanline, that's the way to go.

I think there's a switch to turn on Z-Depth otherwise it will glow just as much when its off in the distance as it is up close. If you're not doing any animation then its fine to not worry about it. But if you are, it needs to be on.

You can also do realtime glow/bloom in the viewport with shaderFX.
http://www.lumonix.net/shaderfx.html
That's what I used for this.

r_fletch_r

if your using mental ray there is a shader called glare. put it in the output shader

pixeldamage

Great stuff guys.

r_fletch_r -Just out of curiosity what map did you use in the filter slot of the self-illumination color to get that strong blue-white gradient. I tried using a white color for the diffuse and blue for the SI color but they blur into each other too much.

pixeldamage

I'm having an issue with the glare camera post fx in mental ray. It works fine with single F9 renders but in animations it seems to ignore it and i'm losing the glare effect. I have the luminance (unitless) value under self-illumination of the Arch and Design mat keyframed so that it increases over time. My renders show no change in luminance (i'm rendering to png's). But if i hit f9 at different points in time i get vastly different luminance as i intended. Is max waiting until the last frame and only doing the post fx on that one (in the frame buffer alone)? How do i get it to render out as intended?

r_fletch_r

I dont actually remember. it was probably a blue to white gradient. Try recreating the shader in the output slot. sometimes that default one messes up

Mark Dygert

I think it pulls from the colors in the map.