mjlarson21 Posted June 27, 2016 Share Posted June 27, 2016 What is the best way to achieve a backlit logo in Formz 8.5? I have attach a picture of what I am looking for. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DennisA Posted June 27, 2016 Share Posted June 27, 2016 With render zone if you can select the back face of object & use derive face tool to create face(s). Make faces into an area light. Check glow & use glow light options for effect your want. You will have to experiment with controls to get what you want. Check manual on are lights Attached file may help. Personally I would do it in photoshop using an alpha channel around isolated object or copy. Glow.fmz.zip Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Des Posted June 28, 2016 Share Posted June 28, 2016 And if you're using Maxwell, you can duplicate the back faces making sure the normals are pointing towards the wall and apply an emitter material. I recently uploaded something similar here (the signage sign). The great thing about using multi light in Maxwell is you can change the strength of the light after the render is done. Des Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DennisA Posted June 28, 2016 Share Posted June 28, 2016 Maxwell solution looked good to me Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kimmo Posted June 28, 2016 Share Posted June 28, 2016 I wish that FormZ Renderzone would have emitter lights. Maxwell's emitters can be used in any glowing surface needs. Renderzone's area lights do not work great if logo is complex and curved. Material's properties reflection glow option just makes the object/surface brighter and do not emit light to close by surfaces. I use illustrator to make 2 vector logos; one larger which is placed behind the main logo and then apply glow and various types of lights depending on the logo used. Emitter light option would solve this rendering challenge. Kimmo Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tech Posted June 28, 2016 Share Posted June 28, 2016 Hi Kimmo, If you want to increase the brightness of an Area Light, increase the light, not the Glow. Or if you need the area light to more closely follow a complex shape, increase the Quality. They are not the fastest rendering light types, but they should work well if you use the right settings... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Justin Montoya Posted June 28, 2016 Share Posted June 28, 2016 The new Thea render plugin does emitters and is very fast! Basically an emitter is a material with light properties. So any object or face that you color with that material will be an emitter light. In the case of 3d logos, you can just select the back faces of the 3d logos and apply the emitter texture. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ThatMNTishman Posted June 29, 2016 Share Posted June 29, 2016 Justin, you've been around FormZ a long time. How do you think the new Thea plugin compares to the Maxwell solution. I spend too much time on the Maxwell side trying to get the result I need, and when I tried Thea with Sketchup, I was very impressed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AHTOH Posted June 29, 2016 Share Posted June 29, 2016 Thea 3 min setup. Instant render. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
d_b Posted June 29, 2016 Share Posted June 29, 2016 mjlarson21, If render speed is a an issue, and you don't have Thea, using a transparency map is the way to go. While this is technically a 6.7 file, this is how I still do backlighting for logos. When I first started out of school about 16 years ago, our computers sucked and we had to learn to fake a lot of effects. This is one of the effects I still use today. This is also why I need to check out Thea. One of the many things on my to-do list. -db Backlight.zip Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pylon Posted June 29, 2016 Share Posted June 29, 2016 Maxwell, 1 minute render Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ThatMNTishman Posted June 29, 2016 Share Posted June 29, 2016 OK, Ben. How did you get such a nice quick render? Can you give us the step by step? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Justin Montoya Posted June 29, 2016 Share Posted June 29, 2016 Justin, you've been around FormZ a long time. How do you think the new Thea plugin compares to the Maxwell solution. I spend too much time on the Maxwell side trying to get the result I need, and when I tried Thea with Sketchup, I was very impressed. Hi Andrew- I like that the Thea plugin is FAST (CPU + GPU) and is much easier to setup and get quality renders using it's mostly default settings. It still has more settings than I will likely ever understand, and it is even more an issue with Maxwell as well. I wish they had a 'simple' mode that would do many changes to quickly develop a rendering style that works for the project. Something in the vein of Keyshot, but that could be further expanded into the options if need be. Not everyone is going to be a camera geek who understands all of that technical jargon they use to label the various settings. Actually, Vray sort of has this, and once it get's further developed, may be the easiest to setup, next to RenderZone which should be praised for it's simplicity. If it had emitters, progressive rendering, and GPU acceleration, it would still be a player in the future. I think it's important to remember who the end user really is here. Personally, I'm a Designer, a creative with a lot of computer hardware experience. I like to draw, and sculpt in 3d. I'm not a Photographer. I don't want to spend weeks trying to learn about cameras lenses and light refraction. It's not part of my job. I don't want to reinvent the rendering wheel. I want to use proven techniques that are fast to implement. Either by using 'simpler' settings, or by using some default scenes that could be loaded and integrated. I just need to be able to show my concept designs accurately enough to sell them. 100% realism is not the goal here. I'll likely never render to level that I 'trick' my audience into thinking it's a photograph from real life. That said, I do need to be able to show modern textures and lighting techniques. LEDs are everywhere, and being able to represent them with simple emitter lights is extremely important for speed in day to day workflow. Sure, alpha channels can fake it fine, but they are much slower to create and set up than just using proper emitters which are also more accurate. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pylon Posted June 29, 2016 Share Posted June 29, 2016 Maxwell Backlight: 1. Make a copy of the rear faces of the logo (Derive Face Tool), and move them slightly toward the wall so they don't intersect with the solid logo. (Alternately, you can just Unstich the faces from the logo instead.) 2. Assign the faces an Auto-translated Emitter Material (default emitter settings are fine, but I changed the output to "Luminance" so all the letterforms would appear the same intensity, regardless of surface area.) 3. Click render Adjust the exposure to suit while Maxwell renders. The only "optimization" I made was to set the logo and wall materials to "Matte." I used the same pixel dimensions as Anton's test above (800x535). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ThatMNTishman Posted June 30, 2016 Share Posted June 30, 2016 nice! Thank you. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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