What's the best way to light up large 3D letters

[GCGAssociates]

I have a large commercial project with standard 3D (18"tall) letters. Whats a good way to light them up for a night time view. I've tried spot, point and parallel and get a lot of ambient background light. Any bright ideas on how to light up each letter?
Thanks!
George

[Curtis Johnson]

Does making them more emissive help? .... Never tried it!

[sutcac]

Weren't you asking about this before?-

http://www.chieftalk.com/showthread....=Sketchup+Text

In my example, I made the fronts and sides of the 3D text semi-transparent, and then set the back face (although the side facing forward) to be emissive (light emitting through the semi-transparent letters). This was done in Kerkythea, but it looked like Tommy had it figured out in Chief/ Pov-Ray.

[GCGAssociates]

Thanks Bryce, I did ask this before but never got the exact instructions on how to "light" them up. I've used the 3D lettering found the the X1 library and would love to have you walk me through it. Do you still add a light source?
George

[sutcac]

Like I said, I did mine with an export from Chief, into Sketchup, and then on to Kerkythea, so Tommy would be the better one to point you in the right direction if you need to stay native to Chief.

To beat a dead horse one more time- I have never been satisfied with the results in Pov-Ray and have seen little else anyone else has done here to convince me that putting the time into that was worth it, so I never did.

[ChiefCanada.com]

Here is two ways to "light em up". The A on the left was made by adding a light fixture from the library then opening the symbol specification and replacing the 3d model of the fixture with the a model of the letter A. The A on the right just has its material changed to max emissive.


Below is a rendering I did a few years back. Please excuse the quality, its highly compressed but its all I can find.

[Tommy Blair]

I did that a real long time ago...maybe in V9.5. I believe all I did was use the 3D lettering from the Chief library, made a symbol of them. When creating a symbol, I made it be an electrical item and in the options tab, made it a light. I just change settings as mentioned for using it in a raytrace. Way too simple.

[Tommy Blair]

Yes. That's all I did. Just tried it again.

[ChiefCanada.com]

Tommy, yes there were some good posts on this but it was so far back that I think they were deleted. Its good to bring this stuff back once in awhile so that others can benefit. Who knows, maybe it was one of your old posts that gave me the idea.