Need advice - light under platform

[arail1]

My client wants to light the underside of some platforms and I have to achieve a down light glow on the floor to represent that and I can't figure out how to do it.

What I've tried so far -

Making the whole underside of the platform a emissive material - result: the shape of the platform is telegraphed on to the floor, not convincing at all.

Ran a strip of rectangle lights under the edges of the platfrom - result: rectangular shapes on the floor, even less convincing. (Curiously, V-Ray registered these lights as being about 2' to the left of where they are in the model).

I can probably dodge it in Photoshop but I'd like to find a more direct solution in case the client comes back and wants to do a lot more of this.

Any thoughts, direction, advice - much appreciated.

[jackwatson]

Is the example you posted the emissive test?

I think emissive would be the way to go, I'm not 100% sure what went wrong when you tried it?

If it looked too orthogonal and you wanted more of a faded feel to it you could just gaussian blur it in photoshop. Or you could try cutting a channel around the perimeter of the underside of the platform and set a strip of emissive material at an angle inside the channel. I imagine this would give a better effect, although I'm just thinking out loud here

good luck either way... will be interesting to see what other solutions there are

EDIT: For emissive you would have to play around with the intensity value. And for rectangular lights you can control the softness of the shadows by changing the shadow radius value... try something like 40 to start with then go higher/lower

[dkendig]

keep in mind that you can place other layers above the emissive layer too, just drag and drop them above the emissive layer. By default the emissive layer is a top most layer, to ensure that you can see it 100% of the time. With other layers above the emissive layer, you can add reflection and diffuse (with maps controlling the alpha) to make some very interesting effects.

[valerostudio]

You should be able to achieve this as mentioned above with an emissive material or a rect light. Make sure your front face is facing out if you use an emitter and if you use a rect light, make sure your intensity is high enough for the scene. I like to set my lights to Watts and use 75 as a starting point.

[arail1]

Thanks all. An emmissive material was the answer. I tried that first but I didn't have it cranked up high enough. With a higher setting it showed a nice even glow.

So much to learn.

[valerostudio]

We've all been there. The learning is the fun part. Well maybe not when a client is waiting for a render and you can't figure something out, that's gray hair and ulcers. Other than that - FUN FUN FUN!!!