Is there a way to make fur glow? *Solved*

Fae3DFae3D Posts: 2,557
edited September 26 in The Commons

I made a custom texture for oso fox, and I would like for part of it to glow.  I made an emission texture, but I don't see anywhere to plug it into the fur surface.  Does anyone know if there's a way to do it?

Post edited by Fae3D on

Comments

  • columbinecolumbine Posts: 453
    edited September 25

    Ooh, glowing fur, my nemesis.

    I can't tell if by "custom texture" you mean you're just basically recoloring the fur that came with the fox, or whether you're using a different shader, or what. If you're using the dual-lobe hair shader that Oso used for that fur, then you CAN force it into plain Iray mode (using the "Iray Uber Base" tool). Then you'll have an emission setting.

    BUT I warn you now

    1. You may get strange results (for one thing, you may find that a color/surface image you put in the Emission Color slot gets ignored)

    2. Your renderer is going to hate you. You are making an emitter for every strand of hair. I have a fairly overpowered machine and when I tried a test, it sat in "Retrieving lights" for close to five minutes trying to wrap its head around all those emitters.

    Post edited by columbine on
  • columbinecolumbine Posts: 453
    edited September 25

    An alternate approach, and one which your renderer will hate far less, is to make the SKIN glowy, not the fur. The glow will shine through the fur, and, depending on how high you turn its luminosity, gives effects ranging from subtle to "spectral blob." This one's set on subtle. I have made ONLY the "coat" surface of the body emissive, and given it the same emission color map as the base color itself.

    ghostfox.png
    1000 x 1000 - 469K
    Post edited by columbine on
  • Fae3DFae3D Posts: 2,557

    I have the hardest time using the right words for stuff XD  What I did was take the white fox texture into a drawing program and draw over it on new layers, basically.  Then I merged one with the (copy of the) original for the skin, and put one over a black background for the emission.  The emission works perfectly on the skin, but I want the emission to glow on the fur as well.  

    I'm a little worried about making every strand emissive, that sounds dangerous lol!  But I guess I'll give it a try, maybe if I render the fox on its own, and then stitch it together with the background in my drawing program, it might work?  I'll give it a try.

    Thank you very much, columbine!

  • Fae3DFae3D Posts: 2,557

    columbine said:

    An alternate approach, and one which your renderer will hate far less, is to make the SKIN glowy, not the fur. The glow will shine through the fur, and, depending on how high you turn its luminosity, gives effects ranging from subtle to "spectral blob." This one's set on subtle. I have made ONLY the "coat" surface of the body emissive, and given it the same emission color map as the base color itself.

    That's what I ended up doing.  I split my emission map up and the parts of the hair that were longer and thicker, I made a geoshell for.  The couple of pieces I needed brighter I just cranked the luminance way up.  I think that's going to work.  Thank you so so much!!!

  • Fae3D said:

    columbine said:

    An alternate approach, and one which your renderer will hate far less, is to make the SKIN glowy, not the fur. The glow will shine through the fur, and, depending on how high you turn its luminosity, gives effects ranging from subtle to "spectral blob." This one's set on subtle. I have made ONLY the "coat" surface of the body emissive, and given it the same emission color map as the base color itself.

    That's what I ended up doing.  I split my emission map up and the parts of the hair that were longer and thicker, I made a geoshell for.  The couple of pieces I needed brighter I just cranked the luminance way up.  I think that's going to work.  Thank you so so much!!!

    You've got lots of clever ideas in your gallery, I hope to see what you come up with.

  • Fae3DFae3D Posts: 2,557

    Ryuu@AMcCF said:

    Fae3D said:

    columbine said:

    An alternate approach, and one which your renderer will hate far less, is to make the SKIN glowy, not the fur. The glow will shine through the fur, and, depending on how high you turn its luminosity, gives effects ranging from subtle to "spectral blob." This one's set on subtle. I have made ONLY the "coat" surface of the body emissive, and given it the same emission color map as the base color itself.

    That's what I ended up doing.  I split my emission map up and the parts of the hair that were longer and thicker, I made a geoshell for.  The couple of pieces I needed brighter I just cranked the luminance way up.  I think that's going to work.  Thank you so so much!!!

    You've got lots of clever ideas in your gallery, I hope to see what you come up with.

    Thank you so much!!!  When I get it finished and posted in the gallery (probably in a week or so), I'll post the finished result to this thread as well.  

  • Fae3DFae3D Posts: 2,557

    Here's the result!  I postworked the colors a little and added some bloom, because I haven't figured out how to make the bloom do what I want in DS, but most of it is right from the render.  It worked well enough, the glow is easily seen through the fur.  Thank you columbine for all your help!!!

  • Cam FoxCam Fox Posts: 54

    Fae3D said:

    Here's the result!  I postworked the colors a little and added some bloom, because I haven't figured out how to make the bloom do what I want in DS, but most of it is right from the render.  It worked well enough, the glow is easily seen through the fur.  Thank you columbine for all your help!!!

    Pretty foxy! <3

  • Oso3DOso3D Posts: 15,009

    VERY cool looking!

  • Fae3DFae3D Posts: 2,557

    Thank you both! ^_^

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