Outer edge glow?
marble
Posts: 7,500
This one seems to have me beat: how do I get an object to glow at the edges?
I have a drone product which has laser beams but those beams are hard edged even though they are emissive. I get that a real laser beam would be hard-edged too but that is not the effect I want for this picture. I want it to glow at the edges. I also had the same issue with characters in the scenes for this project. I wanted them to be targeted by a beam and glow with a kind of aura. I just don't know how to do it. I am guessing that it neds to be done in post but even so, I am not sure how (and would rather do it in DAZ Studio if at all possible).
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OK - I figured out how to do it with a combination of an emission canvas (IRay) and adding bloom in Affinity Photo.
Still, if there is a way to do it entirely in DAZ Studio I would like to know how.
Have you tried the Bloom option in Render Settings?
Yes but I couldn't find a way to isolate it to a single emission surface. All my scene lights got the bloom glow too which is not what I wanted.
When I took the emission canvas to Affinity Photo I was able to erase the other lights on that layer thus isolating the intended beam.
I'm working on something like what you're asking for with respect to the laser beam itself, not the aura around the people.
I did a quick test a little while ago and the results were promising. Not sure if it will pan out, but should have something to show tomorrow (Tuesday).
What I'm trying to achieve is less the neon glow type aura and something like particles surrounding the beam. Kind of like glowing/ionized dust in the air.
We'll see how this pans out tomorrow. :)
Lee
I'll be interested to see your results. Particles in a kind of cloud or some kind of spiral effect? I would have thought that either might need a mesh base but I'll not pre-judge the technique.
I wish there was an easier way to do this, I do animations
in Filament to add glow I apply a black shader to everything else in the scene and white to my glowing surfaces and render a second image series to use as a layer in post
iray you can at least use the advanced shader options to apply matt
As promised earlier, here's my feeble attempt at making a glowing laser beam. I wanted something that was less neon tube looking and more like it was burning through air/dust.
It's a total kitbash of 2 products and DAZ primitive shapes. Plus a handy pistol I have in my content library.
The beam and glow are 2 DAZ primitive cylinders originally created at 1m length and 0.1m diameter. The glow cylinder is parented to the beam cylinder and scaled on the x and z axes to give it a much larger diameter than the beam.
Increasing the beam cylinder's y-axis adjusts the length of the beam (and glow).
The beam material is Age of Armor's Red Light emissive, which I *think* might have been included in the Stage Hand Building and Scene set. I set the luminance to 150W. Probably any emissive light material will work.
The glow material is RG Aventurina Fantasy17 Light Iray glass from the Rialto Glassworks Shaders and Props for Iray set. I adjusted the material parameters quite a bit to achieve the particle effect.
I parented the beam/glow cylinders to the front of the laser pistol and adjusted the beam cylinder x/z axes to get a thin beam and then the y-axis for beam length. Adjusting the glow cylinder's x/z axes increases/decreases how far the glow particles go from the beam.
It's a wimpy solution and someone way smarter than I am will likely have better ways of doing what you're looking for.
Lee
I like the inventiveness. You could play with the opacity and texture of the outer cylinder but I still think the the particles could benefit from a glow too.
Thanks!
I was trying to get the particles to show a different color in my earlier testing. The beam emissive overwhelms the particles. I'll look at seeing if I can crank up the particles somehow. I want to keep the glow cylinder as transparent as possible with just the particles showing. It's a bit of a balancing act. :)
By changing a parameter, the particles stretch a little bit along the long axis and give me a heat ray kind of vibe. I saved that as a material preset since it was cool. :)
Anyway, for those interested, I hope my previous description provides a starting point to play around. You'll have to set the specular/glossiness very low or off in some parameters to hide the glow cylinder but keep the particles showing. Try different glass materials from the set I mentioned earlier, as well. Or try something completely different!
I've achieved the look I wanted, but would love to see what others do to get what you're looking for, marble!! :)
Lee
Herschel Hoffmeyer's https://www.daz3d.com/harbinger-machine-pistol has an effect on the laser scope that looks like what you are trying to do, at least as I understand it.
I would hazard a bet that the effect in that promo (which is exactly what I want, by the way) was done in post. Alternatively, it might be just IRay Bloom because it would apply to any and all emissives in the scene (which is not what I want).
I know that Daz has a Beings of Light product that I purchased a while back that I haven't played around with much yet that is suppose to have a glow effect around people! I am working on a scene right now with light coming out of the figure of God sitting on His throne. I will let you know how it turns out!
If it does do that and you can figure out how, I would be very interested.
So I experimented with adding mini atmosperic shells for lack of a better word to catch the glow of the emissive.
The ray gun image was run through a denoiser but is still more grainy than I'd like so it could probably have rendered for longer.
doing this will add time to your renders by a relatively large margin so using canvases and bloom in post is probably the most efficient.
A geoshell with emission maybe?
I can't imagine why a geoshell would be any less hard-edged than the original mesh - maybe I'm missing something.
In a way I'm kind of glad that I wasn't missing something glaringly obvious but I do appreciate all the suggestions. Following your shell suggestion I'm now imagining a different kind of shell - I might describe it as a concentrated volumetric shell. Something that could surround an object yet be more cloud-like or nebulous.
Maybe we have a PA with the skills to make something like that?