Glow Reflection?

[dnice533]

You guys have been awsome. Another question I have is that I have a glow in the scene that I want to reflect in areas of geomtry that have a reflective surface. Is there any way to do this in maya?

[rartist]

Hmm. That's a tough one, since glow is all post. I though of a bit of a cheat. You could make a render of just the glowing object, and project it on a plane. Set up the Render Stats so that plane shows up in reflections, but everything else is off, and constrain it to your glowing object. Make your glowing object set up not to show up in reflections. You may have to render your glowing object separately and comp it in. Not a solution I guess, but a direction?

[dnice533]

Hey Thanx for the advice man. I kinda see where ya going. I'm a little confused though on how I would project the glow onto a plane. And how do you set up for just reflections to render. I think it's a certain shader applied to all the geometry no? Thanx for the reply man.

[rartist]

What I had in mind (not being able to see what your scenes is like) is to make a render of the object you have glowing from the POV of the reflector object, and put that texture on a flat plane. Use the image and alpha of the image you render to make the glow bright and translucent. You'd probably want to separate this plane from the rest of the lights, and give it it's own lights if necessary. The plane is set up to face what ever it is to reflect in (like the floor). Set it up so that the glowing object isn't visible in reflections, and that the plane (occupying the same space) is visible ONLY in reflections. No shadows or anything else for the plane. Just drop the shader with the image onto the plane and set it up.

[joojaa]

The easiest way is ofcourse to do it in a composition sofware