Hi There,

I’d like to create a sphere mesh and have that particular mesh act and behave as a light so that I can also apply a glow around it.  Essentially, I’m trying to render a ball of energy (light) that can be read by mental ray as a regular light.  I was able to achieve this in finalRender Stage-1 with object lights (i.e. any mesh that behaves like a light) but unfortunately it does not look like I can do this in mental ray.  Does anybody know how I can have a mesh behave like a light AND have a glowing halo around it as if it was processed by a Lens Effect shader? 

I’ve attached an image that I rendered using finalRender, but alas I need to use mental ray for this particular project.  Any ideas would be most appreciated.

Thank you for your time and help!

3DSMax 2011 | Windows 7 Ultimate x64
Apple iMac 27” Bootcamp
Intel Core i7 3.4GHz
16GB RAM
ATI (AMD) Radeon HD 6970M

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If you are using Final Gather, you can make the material on your object Self Illuminating.  There is a checkbox for “Illuminates the Scene” that you’ll want.  Another option (or something to do with this) is to link an omni light to the object, and exclude the object from shadow casting.

If you switch over to Max 2009, they now allow lights to be renderable.  Might work for you too. ;)

3ds Max Design 2012 64-bit - Subscription Advantage Pack / PU10
Dell Precision T5500, Dual Six Core Xeon X5650 @ 2.67GHz, nVidia Quadro 5000, 24 GB RAM, Win 7 Enterprise 64-bit
Minneapolis, MN, USA

To upgrade to Max 2009 would cost me $1200 unfortunately.  I can’t really do that at this point in the production.  Thank you for letting me know about the Self Illumination option for Arch+Design materials and Final Gather.  I got that to work, and then place a light within a sphere mesh, turned off “affect diffuse / specular surfaces” from the rollout, disabled shadow, but apparently I can’t get the glow effect under the lens effects with I render with mental ray.  Is that true?  That’s what I read in the help files, and I simply don’t believe it.

3DSMax 2011 | Windows 7 Ultimate x64
Apple iMac 27” Bootcamp
Intel Core i7 3.4GHz
16GB RAM
ATI (AMD) Radeon HD 6970M

You’ll have to change the Frame Buffer Type under the Renderer tab in the Render Scene Dialog box (F10, Renderer tab, near the top).  Change to “Integer (16bits per channel)” and it should use the glow effect.  At least it worked in my test.

3ds Max Design 2012 64-bit - Subscription Advantage Pack / PU10
Dell Precision T5500, Dual Six Core Xeon X5650 @ 2.67GHz, nVidia Quadro 5000, 24 GB RAM, Win 7 Enterprise 64-bit
Minneapolis, MN, USA

hey if you google object light with mental ray you should be able to find a thread by jeff patton concerning the geolight shader for mental ray....i can’t exactly remember the link so you’ll have to find it on your own...but it is exactly what you are looking for

Cogliati:  Thanks for the pointer!  I did the search and found some threads about it on a couple of boards, but I could not find a link for the shader.  I’m running 64-bit.  Is the geolight shader good for that?

Chris:  I did what you suggested, and the glow, in fact, does work but only when I have my pixel sampling levels very low.  When I increase the samples per pixel, mental ray refuses to render the glow!  What gives?  Any ideas?  I’ve attached the two renders.  The only difference is the minimum / maximum setting.  I did not change any other parameter.  So so strange. . .

Thanks again for all the pointers!

3DSMax 2011 | Windows 7 Ultimate x64
Apple iMac 27” Bootcamp
Intel Core i7 3.4GHz
16GB RAM
ATI (AMD) Radeon HD 6970M

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That is really strange.  I’ve done some tests, and have not been able to reproduce this problem.  Is the glow applied to the light, or the object using G-buffer?  Have you tried the same thing where the sphere is not behind the cestum?

3ds Max Design 2012 64-bit - Subscription Advantage Pack / PU10
Dell Precision T5500, Dual Six Core Xeon X5650 @ 2.67GHz, nVidia Quadro 5000, 24 GB RAM, Win 7 Enterprise 64-bit
Minneapolis, MN, USA

hey,

here is the link where I found the shader info along with all the necessary install files:

http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?t=104578&page=214&pp=15

hope this helps

Chris: It turns out that the sphere (the ball) was around the light that I linked to it.  I had to hide the sphere before the glow would show up in the higher pixel sampling version.  I suppose in the lower pixel sampling case, the sphere object was not sampled enough to fully “encase” the light which the glow was attached to.  I had to hide the sphere to get the glow to appear.  I think I may have to render in two passes and then composite to get the ball and the glow to appear together.

In any case, now I’m trying to get a trail of light to follow the ball, but can’t figure out a way to do that. . . I saw a plugin called GhostTrails by a small company, but it’s only for 32-bit, and I’m running 64bit. 

I’ll start a new thread, but any suggestions would be great.  Thanks for the suggestions!

Cogliati:  thank you for the link, I will try out the shader script.

3DSMax 2011 | Windows 7 Ultimate x64
Apple iMac 27” Bootcamp
Intel Core i7 3.4GHz
16GB RAM
ATI (AMD) Radeon HD 6970M