Taillight Not Quite Right

[RyanTScottLLC]

Hello all, and thanks for reading.

I'm trying to dial in the look of a taillight for and please see below for where I'm currently at.

My current setup consists of an emissive white material applied to the "bulb" geo and a transmissive red material applied "bulb casing" geo that wraps around the bulb.

I did add thickness to the "bulb casing" via the thickness command...

I think I'm getting hung up on the material settings for both the emissive and transmissive materials.

Please see my current render settings below.

Any info is greatly appreciated.

[boxfx]

I'm trying to dial in the look of a taillight for and please see below for where I'm currently at.

Generally your issue is that you've burnt out the brightness and likely have the red filters too red. By all means attach a scene with just the light and bulb cover so we can help. As a simple starting point, go to the "Imager" tab of your octane settings and have a play with the Highlight compression setting and the Clip to white setting. Highlight compression will take the brightest parts of your image and reign them in, allowing you to see the shapes of the brightest bits hidden within the solid blob of red. Similarly the Clip to white slider will let you roll your burnt out reds off into paler pinks and whites as they get brighter.

If that doesn't help then consider adding some imperfections into your red glass. Nothing in your daily life is red red, they're all just mostly red. So if the red glass material, add in some green and blue so the glass isnt too perfectly red.

Aalso consider the internal shapes. Brake light housing arent just a flat/curved piece of glass. Sure they're smooth on the outside, but inside the glass it will be a series of prisms and ridges which cause the brake light to refract light in different directions. If your glass has no internal structure then the brake light is going to look pretty dull.

[RyanTScottLLC]

Thank you both so much. I'm coming from Redshift, so I haven't figured out where all the Octane buttons are yet...

Please see the attached simplified taillight project file and thanks for the great info and resources!