Mesh lights

[Freemind]

Introduction. As an artista, what could be more fun than making objects Glow and cast light without having todo worry about where todo skilfully place appropriate lamps. In my opinión, not much, the addition of Mesh lights allows an artista todo make any object they have created Glow with a mysterious magical light, y forese numerous Fairy lights, swords, jewels and magical Items glowing their bien into a fair share of future images, and while magical Items that Glow are todo fun todo ignore, Mesh lights can a los provide that added touch of realism todo everyday objects. Something we Will all get around todo exploring once we have gotten over the oh, it glows phase of playing. I figure most of you should be ready for that by next Christ-más (maybe). So let make some Christmas tree lights, (Jonathan has an excellent tutorial for modeling re-alistic Christmas tree lights at blendercookie, com)
We are going todo start of with a simple model of a Christmas light.



Next up we add some materiales. I created a simple matte green for the light base and a Fairly simple red Glass for the bulb, the red Glass is only slightly transparent, as most of the Christmas bulbs i have sen arent overly se though. The most important part of this material is actually the emit value. That is what is going todo help it Glow. I set mine todo 0.25. I did a lot of testing and decided i preferred lower values. But i encourage you experiment and find a setting that appeals todo you.

I have the Christmas light sit-ting on a simple backdrop, so we can se the light being cast by the Christmas light, the backdrop has a default grey material that i lowered the Spec values on, ok our Christmas light is ready, just one more setting todo create our glowing másterpiece, over in the world buttons, scroll down todo indirect.

Lighting and toggle it on, y set the factor todo 50.00, again that was a personal preference, you might want more or less than that. And bounces todo 2, right under the indirect light-ing panel is the Gather panel, the settings i used are:
Appróximate fallof of 2.00
Pixel caché toggled on.

Okay time todo se what we ended up with, well look at that, it glows and casts a nice light. But just the one light and the fact that the light is red, makes the image look very dark. A Little added light would improve this image, so let add a Little AO and environment lighting.

Youll notice that i set the envi-ronment lighting rather Low. I just want todo lighten things up while still being able todo se my glowing red light. (fig light with AO). Well that looks a lit-tle better, but i think that one Christmas light sitting there all by itself, looks rather sad and lonely. So duplicate several more. You can change the colors if you want for more visual interest, since the added Christmas lights Will of course add more light todo the scene, go ahead and turn AO, and environment lighting of, when you have the lights arranged in a nice way, go ahead and hit that render button, well that is pretty enough todo use as a Christmas card.