Rendering a filament

I've been playing with various approaches to rendering self-luminous
portions of models. The first attempt was a simple cylinder, as in a
straight fluorescent tube. I can't say that I got satisfactory results with
PW.

A more generalized statement of the problem (and possibly an order of
magnitude in complexity) would be to render a lightbulb with the filament
glowing. The filament could be the only light source in the image being
rendered.

Yet another application I know I'll have might require rendering LED lights
shining through various materials. Again, each and every LED has to be a
light source.

My gut feeling is that this is way beyond what SW+PW can be expected to do.
I read a new thread about an Alias product that looks interesting. Is it
time to consider an external solution?

Any ideas/pointers/thoughs in either direction?

Thanks,

-Martin

 

I haven't really done lights or light filaments but there has been
discussion here at various times on how to achieve this. A search may
pull up some info. Some people had some very believable ways of doing
this. If I rember correctly they set there filamnet to a constant
material setting (in PW) and then switched on Indirect Illumination.
The short explination, any material set to constant with Indirect
illumination will actually work (glow) light a light source. If you
add a little bit of light to the rendering the constant materials will
look illuminated. I beleive one technique is to have a tube (your
light) and use the constant material setting as described above. Then
place a point light inside the tube at a low light setting. The
combination of the ID, material and point light will cause the entire
tube to glow like a light. Not sure I'm much help. If I get some time
I
ll play with it.

 

Here's the thread on what Milke Wilson modeled/rendered...

http://makeashorterlink.com/?I32821D1B

(Indirect Illumination Test Image)

...