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So I'm going to be painting a few models pretty soon and I want to use Object Source Lighting on them, and I thought I would make a couple of practice runs before starting the real deal.

This is just a backpack from an old package, I didn't bother cutting the excess plastic off or anything, it's just a concept.
I guess it's a little odd to have a skull emblem as a glowing light source, but again, just doing this for practice.

How is it? How can I improve?

What you've done is 'bloom'. This helps give the impression that the object is glowing, but is only part of the effect. Put sharp edge highlights on the nearby edges toward your light source, so here the bottom of the grille section, and the inside edges of the vent nozzles. Do not do this for surfaces that have something 'in the way', such as the lower vents, which you've started to highlight. Only highlight things from which you can imagine a straight, uninteruppted line to the light source.

I think you also need to make the skull brighter, but its a good start.

winterdyne wrote:Put sharp edge highlights on the nearby edges toward your light source

Allright, I think I can do that without too much trouble.

Flinty wrote:I think you also need to make the skull brighter

Ok, yeah maybe just some highlights to preserve the depth of the shape. This would make it look more like a light source, like a light bulb.


Unfortunately, this piece has been varnished so I can't do anything else to it
It photographed poorly without a clearcoat, looked like some monster spit out some green slime all over a space marine.
But the clearcoat smoothed that out a bit.
You know how things don't look at all in photography as they do in person, I guess I need to be better at photographing these things.


Well, thanks for your help folks, anything else?

Of course you can carry on after varnish. Just put another coat on the top.

winterdyne wrote:Of course you can carry on after varnish. Just put another coat on the top.

Oh ok, I'll give it a try.
This is an experiment after all.
Thanks!

What makes OSL work is contrast, that means extreme highlights and extreme shadow.

Ashton

not bad but it would be better used on objects that we expect to give off light. This seems a bit forced to me as theres no reason for the skull to emit light. I know its just a test piece but i find it hard to get my to accept the skull is glowing

Allright I've done work to intensify the effect and I think I overdid it.
I'm seeing now that it turned out a little messy, I suppose I could correct that to some degree, and maybe it wasn't really under ideal conditions in the first place.
It seems like it's easy to get too much on, then be unable to go back.

I've got 2 more backpacks to test on so I'll get those primed and get some more practice in later.
Yeah, I don't have any extra parts that make sense to be glowing and emitting light, so I'm just using other parts for practice and experiment

Oh well - here's what I have

It's good that you can self-critique as you are. I agree that it does look a tad overdone on the backpack. Having said that, even a mild OSL effect puts you leagues ahead of painters of equal skill, simply because you are brave enough to try it!

A better question is did you achieve the effect you were after? (rather than overdone/not-done-enough). The steps I use to achieve OSL (and i'm still trying to get it right though) are

1. paint the OSL first
2. with the same paint, thin it right down (almost to nothing). The more transparent the better...
3. With the thinned paint, apply the light effects to the appropriate areas
4. paint the 2nd OSL colour
5. thin the 2nd colour right down and apply in a smaller amount to the most direct areas of light (you want to make the points where the most direct light is brighter than the surrounding areas)
6. continue with 3rd/4th colours in this fashion.
7. once your happy with the brightness of the SURROUNDING light, add the last final colour of OSL one or two shades brighter to simulate that it IS actually the source of light.

...this would be so much easier with pics...

i'll take some with the above steps and post back soon.

In the meantime, have a read of this...

http://blog.brushthralls.com/?page_id=1916

This isn't right. You've exaggerated the bloom, not the direction. You'd need to shade this right back down, remembering that you shade OSL by moving back toward the base colour.

Think of the light as 2 'types';
First you have the diffuse light; this bounces off stuff or filters in the air, and this is what causes the bloom; colour radiating in all directions around the light source. You want this to be subtle, relatively low contrast.
Then you have the specular (reflected) light; this will only illuminate surfaces directly facing the light source. Shiny objects (like metal) need this to be stronger, matte objects weaker.
Example, look at the green light in his hand and how it works on the gold chest eagle and the lower edge of the shoulder pad (which pretty much faces the light dead-on):

Think of the light as 2 'types';
First you have the diffuse light; this bounces off stuff or filters in the air, and this is what causes the bloom; colour radiating in all directions around the light source. You want this to be subtle, relatively low contrast.
Then you have the specular (reflected) light; this will only illuminate surfaces directly facing the light source. Shiny objects (like metal) need this to be stronger, matte objects weaker.
Example, look at the green light in his hand and how it works on the gold chest eagle and the lower edge of the shoulder pad (which pretty much faces the light dead-on):

I was going to go into this, but thought 'too hard'!. +1 to you sir.

I'd suggest the OP check out the difference of specular and diffuse lighting as it pertains to 3d modelling. That generally gives good examples...

My main question to you is, why is the skull glowing in the first place.

My main question to you is, why is the skull glowing in the first place.

Because it's grimdark... needs more light

@ Juggler: Your second atttempt looks good - much better than the first one and certanly better than my first venture into OSL a few weeks back!

@ winterdyne: The Terminator is sweet! Especially the basework is out of this world. Really in awe of your skills, as always.

Cheers,


IK-Painter

For me I like to work my darkest Color first I.e. if I want a bright fire type glow I paint the reds first then do a shade highlighting of a brighter Color and work my way to the source of lighting. This a model I did

snowman40k wrote:1. paint the OSL first
2. with the same paint, thin it right down (almost to nothing). The more transparent the better...
3. With the thinned paint, apply the light effects to the appropriate areas
4. paint the 2nd OSL colour
5. thin the 2nd colour right down and apply in a smaller amount to the most direct areas of light (you want to make the points where the most direct light is brighter than the surrounding areas)
6. continue with 3rd/4th colours in this fashion.
7. once your happy with the brightness of the SURROUNDING light, add the last final colour of OSL one or two shades brighter to simulate that it IS actually the source of light

So, by the different OSL colors, you mean different degrees of brightness of the same color, right?
Stage 1 - dark green
Stage 2 - regular green
Stage 4 - light green
Stage 5 - lighter green

And I'm mostly darkening and brightening the color by adding black or white to it
That's right isn't it? I'm not screwing up at step 1 am I?

winterdyne wrote:Example, look at the green light in his hand and how it works on the gold chest eagle and the lower edge of the shoulder pad (which pretty much faces the light dead-on):
<images>

These are great examples and great advice - thanks!
Actually I'll keep this graphic around for further reference, I've never done Terminators before and I plan to at some point.
I guess I should have mentioned at the very beginning, I'm painting Ultramarines.

Horst wrote:why is the skull glowing in the first place.

I've said before, it's just an experiment and practice for the real thing, I'm trying to get better at it before I go putting this on a good model. It doesn't matter what the light source is so long as I can get the effect right.

GamzaTheChaos wrote:For me I like to work my darkest Color first I.e. if I want a bright fire type glow I paint the reds first then do a shade highlighting of a brighter Color and work my way to the source of lighting

So you're saying I should work from the farthest point away from the light source first? Ok, I can do that.



Thanks very much for your help.
I'll have time next week to mess with this again.

Never take the OSL darker than your base colour, it makes the piece look 'dirty' and the OSL suddenly gets a border around it. Remember that light is additive; it can only make things brighter. Any shadow has to be a result of there not being light.