3D Glow

Use 3D Glow to add a glow to an object or a material in a rich pixel rendering. This makes the object or material appear self-illuminating.

Note: The 3D Glow effect uses the Material Effects or Object ID channels. It does not require the channels Non-clamped Color, Coverage, Color, Transparency, or Sub-pixel Weight to be present (the latter three are not available for RLA files). If present, the channels are used to improve the quality of the effect. With an RPF file, you can use the Node Render ID to choose an object. This channel is not available for RLA files.

Radius

Controls the size of the glow.

Intensity Boost

Controls the brightness of the glow.

Extend into Mask

Extends the glow filter beyond the edge of the object to which it is applied, softening the otherwise hard edge.

Glow Source

Determines what will glow. You can set it to a material ID, or to an object that can be identified by its object ID or render node ID.

Material ID is the ID you assigned to a material while creating it in 3ds max.

Object ID is the G-Buffer channel ID you set in the Object Properties dialog in 3ds max.

The render node ID is a unique number that 3ds max assigns to each object when it is rendered.

To specify what should glow:

1. Select a Glow Source.
2. Do one of the following to select the specific material ID, object ID, or render node ID:
• Click the Pick button, and click on the item in the viewport. The selected item glows. If you select a material, all objects with that material glow.
• Enter a value in the ID field. The ID must be an integer greater than 0.

Minimum Luminance

Creates a cutoff value for the glow effect. The glow is applied only to pixels whose luminance is greater than the minimum luminance value. If you set Minimum Luminance to 0, all the pixels on the selected object or material will glow. If you set a high Minimum Luminance, only brighter pixels will glow. This has the effect of creating "bloom" around bright areas of the image.

Falloff

Controls the softness of the glow effect. More specifically, it determines how much glow is applied to pixels whose luminance is close to the Minimum Luminance. With falloff at 0%, for each pixel, glow is either on or off. With a higher falloff value, glow is applied to pixels in varying degrees depending on how close they are to the Minimum Luminance.

Resize Image

Enable this option if you want the effect to extend beyond the edge of the layer. This option is available only in Composite operators.