Ok, I know this is stupid and cheezy, but if anyone has used 3ds Max, post-render effects … where you can easily put the glow on the lights. I'm wondering if there is anything even close to that in Houdini in terms of short-setup-time.

I know how to do it the hard way, and can think of a few setups for it, but are there any light glowing features hiding out anywhere?

Does the Defocus COP work?

Well, post-render filters definitely work as normal image processing tool. The only thing is that they bake result into a final render, which is pretty bad actually. Can't you just use Glow in COPS?

Alternatively use glow atmosphere shader attaching atmosphere object to a light. Hope it still is present in H9.


cheers,
sy.

Hey Andrew,

There used to be a Fog shader that would make lights “glow” in 8.2, gone in 9 of course but it should work in 9. I don't have time to ressurect it right now, but you should be able to copy the VOPnet in 8.2 and paste it into a Fog VOPnet in 9.

I used it for lightsabers, engine glows, lasers etc. I _think_ it would raytrace correctly into reflections etc too but I don't remember.

COPs are good too but a lot more work.

cheers,

PeteR B

yeah I've played around with the fog in 8, I remember it being a huge pain to get to work but the docs were so scarce I think I was missing a few steps or practicalities.

But yeah I'm guessing COPs and render layers are the way to go. I didn't need all that for this simple thing I'm doing I was just hoping there was a more straightforward way (Ironically, I've never needed those features in Max and viewed them largely as junk to play with)

Thanks for the help guys!

Thanks for the tips, yeah the defocus ended up working the best with a vops-animated shader and M-blur.

http://www.andrew-lowell-productions.com/andrew-lowell-productions/download/01_motion_generated_synthesis.mov [andrew-lowell-productions.com]