How to have an object 'glow' through a character

tnkr95

Not sure if this is the correct forum for this question; I am trying to depict an object that has been 'swallowed' by a character.  I am trying to figure out how to make a prop 'glow' so that it is visible through the character.  I tried adjusting opacity of the torso to be slightly less than opaque so that the emissive prop could 'shine' through.  Has anyone attempted something like this?  And would it be easier to just depict the object in postwork rather than trying to do it in Daz?

Thanks in advance

Ninefold

This depends on the effect you're trying to achieve. How clearly visible do you want the prop to be? If you're rendering in Iray, any sufficiently bright light inside a recent-generation Genesis character will be visible through their skin as a dull red glow with no special changes to the character's shaders, but the shape will be quite indistinct unless it's very close to the skin. You may need to make your prop VERY bright to see the glow. To see the shape very clearly, I would go with a postwork solution: render the figure with the glowing prop inside it; turn off the figure and everything else in the scene, including the environment dome, and render just the prop; combine these images in Photoshop.

Dartanbeck

Instead of Opacity, try adjusting your Translucency. 

But even before that, as Ninefold says, most modern characters with Iray shaders should already be showing something.

Try selecting the Luminance value number, and adding a couple zeroes to the end of the number. Still nothing? Try it again, etc until it gets Too bright inside, then start working backwards with those numbers.

 

Now, if you get the result you like while inside the throat, but it's too bright before swallowing, make a duplicate (not instance) of the object, set the glow on that one how you like it outside the figure. At the moment when the brighter object should be working, set a key frame for the scale. back up one frame and set the scale manually to 0.00, and do the same at frame 0.  At the frame that you set that one to 100 (or whatever scale it was at when full size) set the other object (the one for before the swallow) to 0.00, back up one frame and set it to the proper full size scale, as it should already be at frame 0.

Nice little swap the prop trick. 

 

Another option would be to actually animate the luminance value of the shader using ABAS Animated Shader System.

tnkr95

Thank you for all the help :)