Hi everyone,

I’m trying to create a moving light strip / chasing or scanning effect in Houdini.

The effect I’m trying to achieve is similar to an LED strip where:

The entire strip remains constantly bright/emissive.
A moving section of light travels along the strip/path.
The moving section has a different color and/or higher emission intensity than the rest of the strip.
The moving section should produce a Glow/Bloom effect.
The bright section continuously moves/chases along the path.

I have been trying to achieve this using an emissive material on a path/strip, along with Glow, and I have set up a different color/emission for the moving section.

However, my current setup is not working as expected, and I’m not seeing the emissive effect in the final render.

I have attached/enclosed my Houdini setup file

I’m specifically sharing the file because I would really appreciate it if someone could look through my existing setup and point out what I have done incorrectly.

What is wrong or missing in my current node setup?

Why is the emissive material not appearing in the render?

Is my moving light mask/attribute being generated correctly?

Is the emission being transferred/applied correctly to the geometry?

Is there an issue with the material, render settings, or Glow/Bloom setup?

If there are mistakes in my current approach, I would really appreciate an explanation of what the mistake is and how I can fix it.

if there is another/better approach that can achieve the same visual result, I would also be very happy to learn about it.

Any help in reviewing the attached file and explaining where I’m going wrong would be greatly appreciated.