Nephanor wrote: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.
Nephanor wrote:Something that can be customized depending on the saber color.
It can be customized in post with the necessary AOVs.
Nephanor wrote: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?
Nephanor wrote: 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").