Probably not a very helpful answer, but can you do it in post? It gives you more flexibility that way.

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[Link to www.3dprevis.com]

How would I do that for 300 frames, I suck at doing stuff like that.

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Chris

I don't think metal ray supports lens effects properly. Can you use the Lume "glow" shader?. as steves says the post approach is infinitely better.
provided you have something like after effects or fusion in your kit, otherwise you could make a photoshop action that duplicates the layer, pushes the levels, blurrs then screens it over the top.

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True, it is hard if you don't have a good compositing program...

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[Link to www.3dprevis.com]

I can get the glow shader to emit light but I can't make it "glow". I'm putting it in the self illumination slot of a standard material, Is there a better place?

I got this effect with photoshop by selecting color range> grow selection> feather> adjust gradient map.
I'm not sure how well this will work if I automate it. I'll go ahead and render a few frames and see what happens.

I would much rather do it with max even though I understand the advantages of doing it in post.
So if anybody knows a way please let me know. I could switch to VRay if someone can show a method.

I really appreciate the input.

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Chris

If I was going to do it in vray I would make sure that the orange material is just a standard material with self illumination set to 100. Then I'd just use the glow lens effect.

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[Link to www.3dprevis.com]

whats wrong with doing a photoshop action?. blur and screen.

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300 times? I guess if you're dedicated.

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[Link to www.3dprevis.com]

actions are automatic. record what you do to one frame. then play it back as a batch process on a folder of images.
you have to go to the actions menu. create a new action. make a copy of the first frame you want to edit.
open it. then press record. then do all your levels crunching adding layers blurring etc then flatten, close and save changes. stop the recording of the action.
then go to file>automate>batch. choose the newly created action and the folder of images and hit ok. it can take a bit longer to process than if you did the same things in fusion but its usefull for some things you can't do in a compositor, and if you don't have one.

The copy of the first frame can be deleted, its just there so you can record the action with the save command and not double process the first frame.

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That's awesome. I'm sure that'll come in handy. Thanks Tyson.

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[Link to www.3dprevis.com]

I've used actions to re-size and adjust color on a bunch of images that's about it. For this particular need, the thing I was wandering is, won't the selecting color range vary on some frames due to changes in light or reflection or whatever?
I'm going to try it and see what happens because I like the glow effect I got with photoshop.
I switched everything over to V-Ray to see if the problem I was having was definitely because of a MR/glow issue. I made a discovery. The glow appeared Ok with V-Ray (doesn't look as good as what I got with Photoshop) but it glowed where it was supposed to. With all the objects in my scene unhidden I rendered.
The sword is against a wall, the cool areas of the sword illuminated the wall behind it and the hot areas did not. The problem was with my UVW mapping, the other side of the sword was the opposite of the camera side!!!! I haven't went back to MR to see if that was the cause there, but I'm pretty sure it is.

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Chris

If you are masking the glow by doing a photoshop colour range selection it might get it a bit wrong on some frames. it might still work though, can't hurt to try. but personally I would go for just screening over a duplicated layer and push the contrast with levels so only the bright parts are visible then blur it a bit. Sounds like you nailed the problem though. I'd agree that the max lens effect doesnt look as good as what can be achieved in post.

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Yeah, nothing to loose, I might even learn something. haha

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Chris