How to get coloured neon tubes?????!!!!

[johnnyswedish]

Hi Support,

I need to create a simple row of neon tube lights going from cyan/light blue to white. When I crank up the light all tubes go white which I suppose in real life would happen but I need to visualise them coloured. They emit the light correctly but need the tubes to be coloured, is there a easy way to achieve this or do I have to do it post in Photoshop? Many thanks for any ideas :-) 

[johnnyswedish]

I saw this and its perfect! But link is dead. Any advise how to create it please, please, please :-)

[TomG]

Ray switch so the directly visible and emitted light colors are different intensities, so direct visible doesn't blow out to white?

[johnnyswedish]

Hi TomG,

Much appreciate your quick response. How do I do this? Never used Rayswitch or distant shader before??? Thanks, John :-)

[TomG]

Howdy! I'd suggest https://docs.chaos.com/display/CRC4D/Corona+Ray+Switch+Shader and even

(it's Max, but principles are the same) as good resources to pick up how to use the shader, then you can test to see if it does what you need it to do

(simple version: create two LightMtls one for casting light with high intensity and one with low intensity to be viewed for "preserve the color of the tube", then put the first into the GI slot of the RaySwitch, and the second for preserve the color of the tube into the Directly Visible, Reflection, and Refraction slot of the RaySwitch)

[johnnyswedish]

Tom, You are a legend! Thank you and have a good weekend :-) John

[TomG]

You are welcome, I hope it does resolve the issue for you and if not, let us know. Have a great weekend there too, neon tubes included lol!

[johnnyswedish]

Worked a treat! Thanks :-)

[TomG]

Great to hear, ty for sharing the results of the test!

[tuami]

hey can someone explain to me why this is not working for me? thanks!

[Beanzvision]

Hmm, I think that this will depend on your camera exposure? According to real-life examples, the result is as expected.



If you really want to fake it, you could also duplicate the mesh and make it slightly larger and hide it from the camera using the comp tag.

[tuami]

Hey  Beanz,

could you explan me why the object isnt red in this example with ray switcher material.
Thanks!

*edit
can it be that raywitcher does not work with light material ?

[TomG]

Interesting, we'll take a look.

Meantime you can copy the tube twice. On one, apply the color and intensity that should emit into the scene, and in Advanced settings in the LightMtl uncheck Visible Directly, in reflections, and in refractions. On the other tube, apply another LightMtl with desired color / intensity to be seen on the tube, and uncheck Emit Light.

[tuami]

Interesting, we'll take a look.

Meantime you can copy the tube twice. On one, apply the color and intensity that should emit into the scene, and in Advanced settings in the LightMtl uncheck Visible Directly, in reflections, and in refractions. On the other tube, apply another LightMtl with desired color / intensity to be seen on the tube, and uncheck Emit Light.

Hi TomG
thanks for the explanation, i just noticed that and i am sometimes a bit curious to find out why something is not working that should actually work :)
cheers

[piotrus3333]

Please do remember that drt / tonemapping is big part of how neon lights look.
a few common examples: