Anyone ever modelled a flurescent tube?

biotech

I am pondering how to do this, the inner tubes would be fairly easy, but the translucent plastic casing that still lets all the light through would be trickier.

Genex-X1

It might be do-able in max

Have your inner tube, then have another tube around it, set it so cast shadows are off, and maybe use an opacity map or something like that

NightShadow

That's pretty much what I was going to suggest. The real issue, though, is the glow effect (all flourescent tubes have one). Glow effects aren't usually visible through an object that's occluding it. The inner tube may have a glow effect, but with the outer tube surrounding it, the glow effect will be invisible even if the outer tube's material is set to be transparent.

This is a tricky one.

Melak

Hmm, like a neon lamp? There is a nice plugin for Max, "Surfaceblur", which may be able to achieve the effect that you are looking for, if that is what you are looking for.
Last Jedi Outpost | 3D Studio MAX Plug-ins

Edit: I just looked at the site, theres a new plugin called "Throughout", whcih seems to allow glow to be applied even if the actual object is hidden by another one. I can't read russian though, I just looked at the examples

biotech

That looks promising, stupid works firewall wont even let me open bablefish to translate that site, so guess I will try again at home later.

Guerrilla

Just grab the files. The readme's are in English if I'm remembering right. You might also want to have a look at Throughout. From what I remember it's a plugin for making glowing objects glow behind transparent objects.

[edit] Or you can go over to MAX Plugins.de - the plugin database for 3ds max R1, R2, R3, R4, R5, R6, R7, R8, R9 and search for Pavel Kuznetsov for English descriptions.

biotech

That would also be very handy for nacelles.

count23

one idea for your two tubes would be have an-almost skintight third tube outside your "outer" tube, with something like 95% transperancy and apply the white glow to that. It should do the trick and wouldnt be particularly visible to anyone as anything more then a glow after-image.

IRML

if the tube is supposed to be on then forget about it, just make it 100% luminous and get your glows right, that's all it needs

biotech

I can do the tubes, its the plastic box that sits over the tubes which sits over the tubes and isnt transparent but is translucent, the tubes can be seen through the box, but will look different depending on the angle of viewing.

spudmonkey

You could apply a glow to the outer tube, but set the original colour option in glow to 50% or so. That would create the right kind of effect of highlighting the tube. The inner tube could then simply have 100% self illumination and the combination of the inner illumination and outer glow would be stronger than the parts of the outer tube that don't overlap the inner

Hard to explain, but it would work

tobian

Couple of suggestions that may or may not help...

If your transparent material in front of the 'tube' is like many fluorescent diffusers, aka bumpy, then if you have an index of refraction on the material, it will diffuse the hard shape of the tube underneath.. alternatively or additionally, if the material has refraction blur enabled this will enhance the effect.

Also, you should have some sort of reflector behind the fluorescent tube.. If you have radiosity enabled then this will be 'lit' by the luminous object, or alternatively, if it's reflective, then give the reflective surface reflection blur, and this should also soften the hard edged effect, and also be quite realistic, if slow on render times!

NightShadow

Aaaaah... he's not worried about the flourescent tube itself. He's worried about the cover screen.

I've got MAX8. Looking at the Max User Reference Guide, I see some interesting solutions under the heading "Self-Illumuniation Mapping". Conversely, I have come to learn something.....

In the object's properties dialog, under the Rendering Control list, check the box for "Render Occluded Objects." Here's the word on that from the Max8 User Reference:

Render Occluded Objects—Allows special effects to affect objects in the scene that are occluded by this object. The special effects, typically applied by plug-ins such as Glow, use G-buffer layers to access occluded objects. Turning on this control makes the object transparent for the purposes of special effects. This makes no difference when you render to most image files. When you render to either the RLA or RPF file format, however, occluded objects appear with the effect applied on their designated G-buffer layer. Default=off.

Uhm. I do believe that'll do it. So what's the lesson for today? "RTFM."

[Deleted User]

did you try it with subsurfacing scattering?

tobian

Right Nightshadow, I think you didn't get what I meant..

Quick experiment to show what I mean (and it came out darn nice hehe)

Grab of the wireframe to show the basic layout (yours would have ends, but this was just for demo purposes. At the back you have a reflector with a reflective surface, naturally.. I added a bit of bump texture to break it up a little. The glass is basically a transparent surface (in this case I used the loverly dielectric node, new in LW 9.2!), with a refraction blur of about 50%, a refraction index of about 1.5, and a nice bump map, with a diamond pattern (I actually used Bricks, and widened the mortar to 80%, and removed the stepping), and of course back faces!

Post processing / Post processing filters.. None - all in camera! Not entirely sure if Max can do all these types of settings, but it should do?

biotech

That's looking good, I tried various different materials and combinations of materials last night without anything approaching what I actually see in the office, but its getting closer.

SnowCrash

Was bored so had a go at this......

Larsen

In the end you need to model what you see... not what you know is there!

In real life there really isn't that much clow in a normal officelight...

Have you considdered taking a photo of the light from right underneath it, and using that as a map... add some slight selfillumination and a tad of glow... realworld photos do wonders from time to time!

JeffrySG

Larsen wrote: »

In the end you need to model what you see... not what you know is there!

that's totally true... sometimes we spend way too much time on items that will never be seen. or on parts that can be created in a much simpler way.

biotech

I love the 2nd and 3rd images snowcrash.

Larson, that would only work for certain angles, if you want to move around and still look real, you have to model the tube for real, and make a really transparent cover.

tobian

Well Uhm.. my method was pretty much physically accurate, so I am not sure what the problem is with it?! :P

biotech

There wasn't a problem with yours, its great, I did say so at the time, its just LW, we max users dont have a dielectric node unfortunately.

Melak

I think we don't need a dielectric node, whatever that may be...in Max 9, with the mentalRay Arch&design material, you can blur refractions too! but having the tube emmit light is something different...I think it's possible without VRay which includes a light material, but I don't know how to do it either way (since I don't have VRay ).

Edit: here's my proof of concept. If you do not have max9, you can achieve a similar (and with a bump map quite interesting) effect with Surfaceblur (which does not affect the reflection).
1st = material's own blur, 2nd = surfaceblur (which is a lot faster). You could try to brighten it up by applying a glow to the tubes.

tobian

Sorry I should have explained. Nodes are a new(ish) method for creating surfaces which lightwave adopted since version 9. The 'dielectric node' is simply a preset made glass, where you just set it's colour, and tell it how diffused it is (how rough) and the rest is calculated easy. Nothing about that type of surface is not achievable in any software, as it's basically just a transparent surface, with reflection (fresnel) refraction, and a bump map to add to the displacement effect.

Melak

I think that is what max9's Arch&Design glass material presets are, easy to configure transparent materials. I couldn't recreate the diamond bump map, so I didn't add any.

biotech

I do have max 9, Melek those look great, very similar to what I have in my office

tobian

You can fake refraction blur by simply putting a very tiny scale bump map, and make sure refraction is enabled, so that after it's been antialiased, it looks soft. You usually need to turn up antialiasing up quite a bit though hehe

biotech

To me the hardest part is not refracting the tube, but getting the illumination of the material to look right.

tobian

In all honesty using a tube light shaped object to light the scene will make for a hard time for the radiosity calculation, unless you have the ability to make polygons into lights, as opposed to a self-illuminated surface, which contributes to the lighting in the scene. First things - make the reflector reflective.. which should bounce some light round the scene Beyond that the biggest problem I think you have is you need for the surface to be beyond 100% luminous. Typically the polygons I use to light my scene are either really large or VERY bright polygons. Lightwave can set poly's to be as ludicrously bright as you want (like 3000%) but I don't know if Max can? I know Maxwell renderer allows you to assign a polygon surface to emit light, which makes for more realistic results and because it's being controlled by Maxwell parameters, it would overcome this problem. I know if I have a tiny but ludicrously luminous polygon in LW it creates massivelly grainy images, hence I just go with the light panel method in my interior scenes, as it takes a while but not as much as the physcially accurate light type!

I'd recommended you simply put pairs of linear lighting emitters (does max do Linear lights? Should do?) inside the light objects, and tell them to ignore them. With a good few of them in a scene, it'll take off the hard corners of the linear lights (which are only 2d, giving end problems) and if you enable radiosity, the casing of the light will also contribute to bounce, softening them. The expense of course if hidous rendering times, as if they are anything like LW linear lights they are SLOOOOOWWW to render !