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I'm interested in simulating something similar to this Cold Cathode electrode end.

The main tube can be a surface emitter. What I'm wondering more about is the best solution for simulating the blue glowing gas inside the electrode end glass. Should I model the glass thickness and apply a displacement map to get the lumpy glass welds effect, and then have a shape inside with some kind of blue fog material applied to it that is also a dim light emitter?

hmm.. nice scene to try to do.. but I think if you model real glass (with thickness so its double sided and has hollow area inside) and then you but a SSS volume geometry into it.. you will have huge render time and noise.. cuz of the whole casutics thru dielectic take time to clear.. and also using mxi as your emmiter may not be tru to how it illuminates .. cuz it looks "laser" like light emmition (i mean very parrallel rays)
-so I dont know it may be just fine to model emmiter inside tube so it shoots out parrallel light.. but try both in a very SIMPLE proxy scen w/o any glass/dieletic...
---A BETTER aproach to the SSS gas inside I think would be to creat a plane of geo and apply a BLUE FOG MXI (hdr self illuminating material) and use a AGS trick so that it looks transparent and you can setup a mask fort the mxi layer in the mxm so it fades off to the edges so it dont look solid.. and the center would also only be like 75%ish opacity.. so then you dont have sss noise thru diaelecctic problem..

just my thoughts.. but now that we can clip/transparency any layer inmxm you can take advantage and make a illuminated sog like that.. cuz after it gets refractied in real dielectic it probably will be impossible to tell its not real volumsss inside there (ESP if you make the layer transpaerncy carefully) ..

and i like you idea bout displacing glass.. but to keep render time better.. maxwell isnt effected by high poly count so i would just sculpt(trythe software 3dcoat.com) or bake displacment in glass before render.. to keep render times/noise down..

_LUKE

Thanks for your post to my question.
I'm a Noob to Maxwell, so i'm not 100% sure what you mean by some things, so be patient with me please.
I got to play with it some about a year ago, and now my work is letting me work with it again. I hope to get the 2.0 upgrade this week!

3dtrialpractice wrote:using mxi as your emmiter may not be tru to how it illuminates .. cuz it looks "laser" like light emmition (i mean very parrallel rays)

not sure I understand what you mean by using an mxi as an emitter. You can make a texture with light emitting portions?
I can say for sure the blue inner gas part is not laser like, it's just a glowing gas fog. the tube guiding it along any shape. It's just like a Neon sign only this is Argon gas I believe. The cathode tub it's self has a phosphor surface inside the glass that glows brighter when energized by the electricity in the gas plasma.

3dtrialpractice wrote:---A BETTER aproach to the SSS gas inside I think would be to creat a plane of geo and apply a BLUE FOG MXI (hdr self illuminating material) and use a AGS trick so that it looks transparent and you can setup a mask fort the mxi layer in the mxm so it fades off to the edges so it dont look solid.. and the center would also only be like 75%ish opacity.. so then you dont have sss noise thru diaelecctic problem..

sorry I don't follow what you say here, maybe to many maxwell terms I don't know yet. are you saying put a flat plane (facing the camera) inside the modeled glass? you couldn't move the camera for different views if you did that?

3dtrialpractice wrote:i like you idea bout displacing glass.. but to keep render time better.. maxwell isnt effected by high poly count so i would just sculpt(trythe software 3dcoat.com) or bake displacment in glass before render.. to keep render times/noise down..
_LUKE

at this point I'm still trying to find tools to even get models built. I currently have access to and know how to use SketchUp, but it's rather limited in the kinds of modeling it can do. I'm exploring other tools (that run on Mac preferably) so I can recommend one for more detailed modeling. modo is on my list, but I get the feeling from something I posted last year that it doesn't export UV coords, just like much of the models I've built in SketchUp... I have some experience from long ago in other tools, like the modeler that Electric Image was building many years back, but it's been a long time since I had the opportunity.

hey im super swamped now with last min project ..but ill respond more to rest of q's later.. all i can respond to now is modeling software for mac(osX) i run only windows.. but i know a super awsome program.. (max from this forum turn me on to)
http://www.3dcoat.com
it has a osx build too.. super great ap. .and amazing tools for the low $price!(relative to zbrush or mudbox)

its a poly/voxel sculpter.. its a paint ap, it does uv layout, displacment normals setup backing.. probably the best/easiest retopology tools out .. also lets you geterat geometry from "scratch" using primitives, curves, OR image plane profiles..(it will uild a3d model from bringin in b/w images of front-side-top views-it will volume creat them out-no premodeling neccessary)

and the developer litterally upgrades almost consistently weekly/bi-monthly so far... fixing updating what users want/report on forum

definatly try the 30 day demo!

Ahhh, finally getting a chance myself to start looking at the new 2.0 Maxwell stuff. I like what I see. Soon I will start to try to take on this.

Here is a model I've been hacking together in Sketchup. (it's all I have access to still...)

I'm now trying to figure out the best way to make the main tube body glow, like the Phosphor on the real thing.
I built a model of the inner surface that fits just inside the glass without touching it and applied an emitter to that, but it only sends light outward, so maybe that isn't the best solution, or I need to build inward pointing faces for the part you can see easy from the open glass end...

Since I don't yet have any other tools for messing with generating UV systems and stuff, i'm not sure how else to go about this at the moment.

I'll worry about the glowing gas after I get this part....




(is this topic ok here? Should it be moved to a different section?)