Lightsaber Effect? Tweet

[Nephanor]

I was if people have come up with a decent way to do the glow effect of a lightsaber. Something that can be customized depending on the saber color. After all, there are Sabers that have a black interior color with a outer glow color. I was thinking about having it as an interior rod which glows the inner color, with a transparent outer rod with the glow color. This would allow you to have the split, but I worry about the outer glow 'tainting' the inner glow for a white inner. Thoughts?

[wimvdb]

with separate inner and outer rod the color will only interfere when emission value is high, use 1-3 as power with surface brightness enabled.
To get a smoother transition, you can use a gradient or falloff node in the opacit in the outer rod and a gradient in the emission color.

[elsksa]

I was if people have come up with a decent way to do the glow effect of a lightsaber.

It is a post-production matter, unless "atmospheric-volume" is used in the scene, even so, it will only scatter light.

Something that can be customized depending on the saber color.

It can be customized in post with the necessary AOVs.

After all, there are Sabers that have a black interior color with a outer glow color.

A Lightsaber weapon does not exist in reality. Are you referring to a fake physical object (toy) or a movie/series reference?

I was thinking about having it as an interior rod which glows the inner color, with a transparent outer rod with the glow color. This would allow you to have the split, but I worry about the outer glow 'tainting' the inner glow for a white inner. Thoughts?

Two correct "recipes" (ways) I will breakdown below are much simpler - it requires some "color-science" knowledge to fully understand the process but to keep this post short, the details will be spared.

First way:
• The cylindrical lightsaber geometry (mesh) would have an emissive light material applied to it,
• For the "color", it is recommended to use the GaussianSpectrum node - the color should not be fully saturated but subtle enough,
• "Glow" can be achieved via the Octane's Camera Imager "Bloom" option or in post (using an exponential type of glow!).

Second way:
• The cylindrical lightsaber geometry (mesh) would have an emissive light material applied to it, without any "color" this time,
• The color would come from applying it to a geometry (mesh) enclosing the lightsaber emissive mesh,
• "Glow" can be achieved via the Octane's Camera Imager "Bloom" option or in post.

The rest comes down to having a proper display-rendering-transform (such as the simple and straight forward: https://sobotka.github.io/filmic-blender) and playing with exposure in the Camera Imager.


This is the closest to a physically plausible "colored glow" from an emissive light source and both valid techniques used in VFX/CGI productions. The scene can not be shared but the asset is available on mecabricks.com ("general grievous").

[Nephanor]

with separate inner and outer rod the color will only interfere when emission value is high, use 1-3 as power with surface brightness enabled.
To get a smoother transition, you can use a gradient or falloff node in the opacit in the outer rod and a gradient in the emission color.

Okay....this is good advice. Never uses a falloff node, so no idea how to make that work. The gradient seems to work, but not as well as I'd like. Any help would be greatly appreciated, this is something entirely new to me.

[wimvdb]

The falloff map is a blend node between 2 textures/colors which depends on the viewing angle. The skew factor is where you define how strong the angle effect is. Set up a mix texture, put the falloff map in the Amount and the two colors in the textures.
You can also use the falloff map in the opacity (colors white and black) to fade out the material.

It is also the mode you would use in velvet type materials

[Nephanor]

The falloff map is a blend node between 2 textures/colors which depends on the viewing angle. The skew factor is where you define how strong the angle effect is. Set up a mix texture, put the falloff map in the Amount and the two colors in the textures.
You can also use the falloff map in the opacity (colors white and black) to fade out the material

Okay,I mostly have this look. I put the falloff in the opacity and got it where it looks good going between the 'inner' color and the 'outer' color. But now am having a hard time making the edge of the outer color less harsh. Give it a softer gradient on the edge. I tried doing it as a subtract where the top value was the solid Edge falloff and it was subtracting a gradient of another edge falloff that was tighter (basically a falloff that just gave the rim of the outer) but it doesn't seem to work. Is there a better way to give the edge a gradient, or maybe give a 'glow" around the edge that will soften the edge?

[wimvdb]

The falloff map is a blend node between 2 textures/colors which depends on the viewing angle. The skew factor is where you define how strong the angle effect is. Set up a mix texture, put the falloff map in the Amount and the two colors in the textures.
You can also use the falloff map in the opacity (colors white and black) to fade out the material

Okay,I mostly have this look. I put the falloff in the opacity and got it where it looks good going between the 'inner' color and the 'outer' color. But now am having a hard time making the edge of the outer color less harsh. Give it a softer gradient on the edge. I tried doing it as a subtract where the top value was the solid Edge falloff and it was subtracting a gradient of another edge falloff that was tighter (basically a falloff that just gave the rim of the outer) but it doesn't seem to work. Is there a better way to give the edge a gradient, or maybe give a 'glow" around the edge that will soften the edge?

You can have more control over the falloff by using multiple stop points in the gradient node. Unfortunately, the plugin does not support that directly, but indirectly you can by using the edit button in the material properties. When you do this, you can enter all octane material nodes and edit them within octane. The gradient with a single begin and end point is a smooth transition. By adding stop points you can make the transition behave differently: Add a node closer to begin or end point and it will be more like a exponential fall off. You can add as many stop points as you need.
Alternatively you use the octane standalone to create the material, save it as a orbx in localdb and apply it in the plugin.