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How to get shapes in shaders?

PjotterPjotter Posts: 274
in Carrara Discussion

I want to make certain parts of a shader a glow. (Turn on and off) Let's say a clock on the wall. I would like to make for instance the numbers or the arms or the the outside border glow. So it is not a object. It is a picture on a plane. I could manually adjust the shader UV map and create individual shading domains, but this is very complicated for round parts. Any ideas how to do this?

Comments

  • TangoAlphaTangoAlpha Posts: 4,584
    edited October 2017

    You could make a glow map. This is also how lights on control panels etc generally work. Black = no glow, & the lighter it is, the brighter it is. Place the image in the Glow channel of your shader (emissive channel in DS Iray, or ambient for 3Delight).

    Here's an example of a clock face. For the glow map I duplicated the numerals (Photoshop text layers), made them red, and placed them in front of a black background. Simple as that. For a little bit of grunginess, I added an inner glow effect using a darker red.

     

    Edit: Red was probably not the best colour to choose, because of the compression artifacts on the forum. But hopefully you get the idea.

    sh_ClockFace.jpg
    512 x 512 - 241K
    sh_ClockFace_glow.jpg
    512 x 512 - 53K
    Post edited by TangoAlpha on
  • PjotterPjotter Posts: 274

    Thank you. That is what I needed. Because I had the right input, found some more, like this pdf for the ones who need this:  www.sharecg.com/v/33074/get_file.pdf

  • TangoAlphaTangoAlpha Posts: 4,584

    Yes, you can use all the multiply etc operators on the glow channel, to build up the effect that you want. smiley

  • DartanbeckDartanbeck Posts: 21,583

    Yes. And using black-to-white maps, you may also use those to control a color gradient:

    • Black = left side of gradient
    • White = right side of gradient
    • Gray = everywhere in between

    which I find very useful for color channel, glow, etc., and any of this can of course be animated along time. 

    Blinking is easy with two simple keyframes and an oscillate tweener. Noise tweener is invaluable for making intermittent flickers, like a light bulb that's about to give up, exit sign on the brink, twinkling stars, etc.,

  • PjotterPjotter Posts: 274

    As soon as I got this all under control (this is new territory for me), I want to make it more complicated. I am also going to combine it with PyCarrara to sync it with my music. But this is far in the future. I am so glad I am using Carrara. Otherwise I probably wouldn't have tried it.

  • DartanbeckDartanbeck Posts: 21,583

    Isn't that something? Carrara just invites, and is then also capable of outputing, such a vast array of possibilities for SO many things.

    It's magic!

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