jordanmurry Posted November 19, 2014 Share Posted November 19, 2014 The title says it pretty straight forward. I, not for a lack of trying, cannot find a way to reproduce the type of glowing you get with a cone light on a line light. I've tried using accurate and simple settings for lights, using accurate and simple glow settings to no avail. I've gone through multiple threads for creating fluorescent lights, neon lights, etc, which I all thought might get what I'm trying to do, but I just can't seem to make it do what I want it to do. The most recent thing I was reading was that in order to see the glow, there needed to be "fog" and that this significantly increased the rendering times. Unfortunately, I see nowhere that I can add this, just things in the manual that say it makes renders slow down. Being self taught, I've thought I probably just don't know something simple, so maybe somebody can help? I've attached a cropped section of an image that I had to go in with photoshop to add some pretty uninspiring light glow in order to get a project out under a deadline... This is what I'm trying to do within formZ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kevin Posted November 20, 2014 Share Posted November 20, 2014 I'm in a similar situation as you. You might want to check out this thread for some suggestions. http://forums.formz.com/index.php?/topic/53-creating-a-neon-glow-in-formz-7-and-renderzone/ Different application of the neon glow but could be transferable to what you're trying to achieve. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Justin Montoya Posted November 22, 2014 Share Posted November 22, 2014 This definitely seems like a limitation of the RenderZone engine. With the current popularity of LED lighting accents, this is becoming more and more difficult to constantly work around. We regularly use a gradient transparency map to create these effects on planes we build where the light should be glowing. It would be really nice if RenderZone could do this without the transparency map work around. But I think it's age is starting to show, and unless FormZ gives us a significant change in the rendering engine, you are probably best getting these results from Maxwell, if you can justify the cost and rendering times. Hopefully FormZ will chime in here and explain why the Glow feature doesn't seem to work right with Line and Area lights. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tech Posted November 24, 2014 Share Posted November 24, 2014 Gentlemen, Rendering with Glowing Line Lights is certainly possible. Please see the attached file: Neon_Glow.zip It does add some time to the rendering, but that is as expected. Does this help? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Justin Montoya Posted November 24, 2014 Share Posted November 24, 2014 Tech- If you render it on a blank black background, does it show any glow? Also, can you please provide a version 7 file? Thanks! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Justin Montoya Posted November 24, 2014 Share Posted November 24, 2014 Thanks Tech- I found the v.7 file in the other thread. After deleting the walls, this light still glows... Impressive. Yes, it renders pretty slow. I think I may have discovered why it wasn't working in a recent test file. There is a second Light Glow button that needs to be turned on in the RenderZone panel. I wasn't aware of this, or atleast I forgot. The Glow needs to be turned on in both the light and in the RenderZone panel. I'm not sure if there is really a need for this second button in the RenderZone palette, and it seems like it would be much more intuitive if it were turned on automatically if you turn on Glow in the Lights palette. Also, can you please tell me why it takes more than twice as long to render one of these types of lights in v7 vs v6? I imported the file to v6 to see if it had different settings from my test line light, and was shocked at the tremendous rendering speed difference. Thanks for your help Tech! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tech Posted November 24, 2014 Share Posted November 24, 2014 Hi Justin, In the RenderZone options, the Light Glow is on by default, but you can disable this to disable all the glow from all objects in your file at once if you like. (If you turn it off, then yes, you will also need to turn this back on to get it to show the glow from the lights.) This is rendering about the same speed for us in v6, 7, and 8, so not sure how to answer that part... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jordanmurry Posted November 24, 2014 Author Share Posted November 24, 2014 Support, I see the file you've placed, but I can't manage to get these kinds of lights to work for objects that are not 50' or more, like the object in your file. I can't seem to make, say, a rectangle that is 36" x 72" have a glow of 3" to 5" and no more. All the lights I get from using your file as a template end up giving me FEET of glowing light. If I try to adjust the numbers to what I think would scale down, the light either disappears or still has too much glow radius, despite a setting of even as low as 1/2" for the light and for the glow. Any help on this? Thanks, Jordan Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tech Posted November 24, 2014 Share Posted November 24, 2014 Hi Jordan, Yes, there is a limited minimum size to the radius of the glow (although we are not sure exactly why). We will check with LightWorks and see if this is something that can be reduced in size for the future... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Justin Montoya Posted November 24, 2014 Share Posted November 24, 2014 Nice observation Jordan! I knew there was another reason why this light wasn't particularly useful for small glows such as from modern LED tape lighting. Thanks for your research into this matter FormZ Tech! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jordanmurry Posted November 24, 2014 Author Share Posted November 24, 2014 So, in theory, I could just scale my models to account for that minimum glow for the time being? Do you guys happen to know what that current minimum glow radius is? I'm sure I could tinker with it to find out an approximation, but if that happens to be a readily available piece of information that'd save me some time! I'm assuming I can scale the model and lights, then adjust the intensity of the room lights if/as needed then use the line lights now that I've compensated for the minimum glow. Thanks again for all the prompt and helpful responses, Support! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tech Posted November 24, 2014 Share Posted November 24, 2014 Hi Jordan, Yes, that could work, but you will need to experiment to find the options that work best for you: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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