Emissive glow in Max

Pope Adam

hey folks

I work with both Maya and Max and was curious if Max has any method of making materials glow via texture channels.

Maya has a function in their material editor that has a glow channel. I know that Max has a self illumination channel, but it doesn't have, at least that i've found, a channel to stick a glow map in to make certain parts of a material emit a small fuzzy glow.

here is a render of the effect I'm trying to achieve in Max. This is a maya software render with a map thrown in the glow channel on the lights on the ceiling. Any ideas?



I know that the maya glow is a post processing effect... what would Max's equivelent be? Thanks everybody!

butt_sahib

yes that would be post-render process in max aswell. It works really welll with the self-illuminated channel.It could also be a mixture of naughty fall off maps and mental ray operations. Quick googling! This tutorial is for a neon glow, but you can easily replicate that for what youre going for.
You could even add a bloom effect in post in max aswell (Render Elements)

OR
You could also use SEXY realtime shaders and display the glow/bloom inside the max ui.
heres a link to two shaders i know have glow map support.
1)The one over at GA awhile ago
2)This one is by buzzy over at 3dtotal

OR
You could even alpha that small fuzzy glow aswell!

commander_keen

render glows and spec in different layers and composite in photoshop or other compositing program.

Psyk0

The equivalent in max would be video post glow filter.

First assign a G-buffer ID to your emitter objects (right click objects and change g-buffer to let's say 2) this means that only objects with this ID will be altered by the filter.

Go to rendering > video post > press add scene event (teapot) assign which camera or viewport you want to use > press add image filter event > lens effect glow > Ok > click setup to change parameters.

You should be able to see your changes in the preview window as you tweak the settings, note that the effect will only be visible when rendered from videopost not with default scanline renderer.

Psixos

If you wanted to go down the realtime shader route, more recent versions of max ship with a texture driven directx glow shader called hammertime.fx

(Edit - apologies butt_sahib, your first shader link is an improved version of hammertime.fx)

Pope Adam

Thanks for the feedbacks fellas... I'm not necessarily looking for an in-viewport shader, but a post processed effect.

Psyko, I've found several diffferent tutorials online for the method you're talking about and it's one that I think would be easy and understandable... but I keep getting the wrong results... it keeps applying the glow effect to the ENTIRE object, when I want it to only be applied to little bits and areas that I've predetermined with my glow map. How do I get the glow effect to be limited strictly to my where my UV coords and glow maps indicate?

My material ID channels don't seem to be obeying me.

Eric Chadwick

When you're looking at your Bitmap in the Material Editor, are you setting the #'d button to the left of the Show Map In Viewport button?

Max unfortunately calls this the "Material ID Channel", not to be confused with the Material IDs used in the Multi/Sub-Object material.

Anyhow, down in your Bitmap set this button to a non-0 number, and in Lens Effect Glow check Effects ID and set it to the same number.

ryanjohnsond

Pope Adam wrote: »

hey folks

I work with both Maya and Max and was curious if Max has any method of making materials glow via texture channels.

Maya has a function in their material editor that has a glow channel. I know that Max has a self illumination channel, but it doesn't have, at least that i've found, a channel to stick a glow map in to make certain parts of a material emit a small fuzzy glow.

here is a render of the effect I'm trying to achieve in Max. This is a maya software render with a map thrown in the glow channel on the lights on the ceiling. Any ideas?



I know that the maya glow is a post processing effect... what would Max's equivelent be? Thanks everybody!

What is that called? I would love to learn how to do that.

ryanjohnsond

I would love to see the what types of lights you used and where you placed them.