Creating glowing materials - Tutorials | CGenie

The setup
First you should set up your scene as you require - you can do whatever you want. I've slapped a sand texture and a charcoal texture from here onto a plane and applied the respective displacement, bump and speculars to add some realism.
Add a light source and set it at a very low level (eg 0.3). This is important as it will turn off the default lighting in 3d studio max (once you've finished testing, you may want to turn off the light completely if the light source isn't required).
The glow material
Next apply a new material to the object you want to emit light and change the map type from Standard to Arch & Design (mi).
Click the M button next to the color picker and add your texture (you can generally set your texture up with all the bumps, specular settings etc).
If you scroll down, you'll see a section called Self Illumination (Glow). Tick the box next to Self Illumination (Glow) to turn it on and pick the color.
As my charcoal texture was variable in the light it gave off (ie the black bits should not give off light, whereas the orange bits should) I added the color map here as a filter by clicking the M button next to the color picker.

Also increase the physical units to about 1000 (you may need to play with this to suit your scene) & tick both 'visible in Reflections' and 'Illuminates the Scene (when using FG)'.
Final tips
That's actually moreorless it! If you're using an older version of max, make sure you have final gather enabled in your mental ray settings (and of course make sure you have mental ray as the renderer).
You might also want to play with the final gather multiplier to get a stronger effect.

However that should be enough to get you adding a little glow to your scenes!


Objective	Software
In the above render you can see two identical spheres, both have exactly the same texture applied. However you'll see that the one on the right is exuding light and is much more realistic in the way it casts light on its surroundings. This tutorial will highlight a few useful settings for you to use in making your materials cast light.	3D Studio Max
	Time Required
	15 mins
	Skill Level
	Beginner
	Rating
	Votes (19) \| Hits (8003) \| Comments (12)
The setup First you should set up your scene as you require - you can do whatever you want. I've slapped a sand texture and a charcoal texture from here onto a plane and applied the respective displacement, bump and speculars to add some realism. Add a light source and set it at a very low level (eg 0.3). This is important as it will turn off the default lighting in 3d studio max (once you've finished testing, you may want to turn off the light completely if the light source isn't required). The glow material Next apply a new material to the object you want to emit light and change the map type from Standard to Arch & Design (mi). Click the M button next to the color picker and add your texture (you can generally set your texture up with all the bumps, specular settings etc). If you scroll down, you'll see a section called Self Illumination (Glow). Tick the box next to Self Illumination (Glow) to turn it on and pick the color. As my charcoal texture was variable in the light it gave off (ie the black bits should not give off light, whereas the orange bits should) I added the color map here as a filter by clicking the M button next to the color picker. Also increase the physical units to about 1000 (you may need to play with this to suit your scene) & tick both 'visible in Reflections' and 'Illuminates the Scene (when using FG)'. Final tips That's actually moreorless it! If you're using an older version of max, make sure you have final gather enabled in your mental ray settings (and of course make sure you have mental ray as the renderer). You might also want to play with the final gather multiplier to get a stronger effect. However that should be enough to get you adding a little glow to your scenes!

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