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SO I have been painting for 1 year and 1/2 and I still can't figure out how people get such a nice glow to things like necrons weapons and eldar weapons and things like that. how does one get something like that done?

thanks,
xofox

OSL, or "Object Source Lighting" is the technique you're looking for. I'm certainly the furthest thing from an expert (I'm just learning to do this myself), but I've found a few good tutorials on youtube that helped give me the basic principles and concepts:


ichibanpainting:



Colour of the Gods:



Jay Adan:



linkinhearts666:




Hope that helps get you started!

Colour selection is very important.
Also it rarely looks as good irl as it does in many photos/videos.
A little fiddle with the white balance or some clever lighting often makes the effect seem much stronger.

 Alex Kolodotschko wrote:
Colour selection is very important.
Also it rarely looks as good irl as it does in many photos/videos.
A little fiddle with the white balance or some clever lighting often makes the effect seem much stronger.

I agree. I don't OSL any of my models anymore. They look great in a photo as a solo model or a planned set of models, but at the wrong angle on the tabletop, OSL can look really weird. Particularly when you have lots of models that all have OSL and NMM effects, it just doesn't look pleasing (or cohesive) to me.

It's worth noting that you can make the weapons themselves glow, without making anything else on the model glow. This simple plasma pistol is glowy and doesn't involve a whole lot; just a bit of layering:

thanks alot