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Redshift in Zbrush: Rendering a lightbulb

I am trying to rendering a lightbulb using Redshift in Zbrush. It seems when I apply an emissive material to the wire inside the glass bulb, the emissive material just barely glows. Is it possible to get that realistic glow effect in this current state of Zbrush redshift?image|962x784Lightbulb render

Hi @Decaffeinated ,

Yes! However please remember than in order to show off emissive properties, that light must have something to interact with (a surface to bounce off of), and it should not be competing much with other light sources that may drown it out–for instance the default panorama that is active by default in render> redshift renderer.

If the only surface that light has to interact with is the transparent glass that it would mostly pass through, it may not be showing it off well.

Another issue to keep in mind is the limited surface area of the filaments. Meshes with larger surface areas will broadcast the light more effectively, but meshes like that with small surface areas may struggle a bit to broadcast the light.


Please take a look at this extremely quick and dirty example that I spent all of 60 seconds putting together. The key point here is that you can increase the emissive weight of the material as much as needed, which will increase the glow amount. However this will at the same time increase the intensity of the light which may blow out any color you have assigned to it. You’ll need to find a balance here, or use the individual color overrides at the bottom to influence the visible color as opposed to the emissive color.

Likewise you could simply use multi pass rendering and correct for each with compositing in an image editor (like photoshop).

Light created as an emissive quality is not like other scene lights. There are limiting factors like the surface area of the mesh compared to whatever it is interacting with. This feature in itself does not create any kind of volumetric glow effect visibly radiating out from the source. The light projection distance will be more limited than some sort of infinite scene light. It will be defined by what other objects in the scene it is interacting with. If I did not create the base for it to illuminate, the light would not be seen.

Good luck! :slight_smile:

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