Create Neon Lights with Vray

Isometric View of Entire Scene

As you can see, in this particular scene, I pay little attention to objects that are not in view of the camera.

Note: The object acting as the floor is just a copy of the back wall. Also I placed a plane above the floor acting as the face of a billiards table. The plane is not in view of the camera but it is necessary for light bounces and color bleeding.

Vray Global Switches

- Displacement is Enabled
- Default Lights is Disabled

Vray Global Illumination Settings - Pretty basic settings here.

- GI is on
- Primary GI engine is set to Irradiance map
- Secondary GI engine is set to Quasi-Monte Carlo

Vray Irradience Map Settings - Pretty basic settings here as well.

- Irradiance Map preset is set to medium
- Under options I enabled show calc phase
- Mode is set to Single Frame

Vray Environment Settings

- The environment light has been enabled and toned down to 0.2
- The reflection/refraction environment has been enabled and set to 1.0

Note: a HRDI map was used for the reflections

V-Ray Material Settings for the YELLOW-BLUE neon light (OFF STATE)

Since this material is for the off state of the neon light, it is not a Light material and it does not generate illumination.

- The material has Fresnel reflections
- IOR set to 2.0
- Max depth set to 8

V-Ray Material Settings for the YELLOW-BLUE neon light (ON STATE)

Since this material is for the ON state of the neon light, it is a V-Ray Light material and it generates illumination.

- The material is a V-Ray light material
- The color has been set to yellow/orange
- The multiplier has been set to 2.0

Vray Light Settings

The light in this scene comes from three sources.

1. Environment light
2. The Neon light
3. The V-Ray light
(All of the above contribute to the global illumination)

As you can see from the screen grab in the right, the V-Ray light is positioned in the top right portion on the scene. It is facing towards the wall and is aimed slightly towards the main scene geometry. I wanted to make it appear as though there was a bar or some other light source just off camera.

- Multiplier was set to 60
- A reddish color was applied to the V-Ray light
- Subdivs were left default at 8

Vray Camera

- Type was set to Still cam
- F-number was lowered to 2.0
- Exposure was left on
- Vignetting was disabled

Vray Material settings for the wall

I wanted the wall to look old and worn down. I added some displacement to the wall as well as some graffiti to give it some character.

- The material has light Fresnel reflections with an IOR of 2.0 with a max depth of 8
- Reflection glossiness was set to 0.85 (this increases the material's glossiness) with a max depth of 8

Vray Displacement settings for wall (Left)

- 2D Mapping was used
- Plaster2D.jpg was used for the displacement map
- Amount was set to .03"

Vray Displacement settings for the hand Chalk (Left)

- 2D Mapping was used
- chalkdisplace.jpg was used for the displacement map
- Amount was set to .001"

The displacement map choice for the chalk was fairly arbitrary. Basically all I wanted was to have a rough surface on the chalk to simulate it has been used.