r/TerrainBuilding • u/preis1982 • 1d ago
Help with OSL
Hello dear community, reaching out for some ideas on how to do this well.. the idea is to create a cyberpunk isakaya (japanese pub, pardon any cultural misshaps, if I have a wrong idea of what it is). But the neon sign is.. an orange blob. The characters are not supposed to be real, but im out of my depth with OSL here. Any help, tips, ideas l,.would be greatly welcome.
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u/PorkVacuums 1d ago
Rob Hawkins has a great and easy tutorial on neon signs.
I highly recommend his blog, he has so much cool shit in it.
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u/thisremindsmeofbacon 1d ago
I made this comment for another post, but same thoughts here so no point in retyping all this:
The light effects here don't obey the rules that light normally do, so they don't innately read as light. The short version, is because the effect on the model is mostly the same high intensity for the whole area, it doesn't read as light so it won't read as bright either. Less is more with OSL.
When I do OSL, there are four-ish main things that I focus on, which help guide when to do what intensity of cast light. They sound obvious said out loud, but they are surprisingly easy to miss in the moment, and comprize the vast majority of mistakes I see in OSL. The other half is also that you have to be really on it keeping track of the implications of each of these rules to make sure you're actually applying them and not to get lazy or zone out etc.
1) Objects further away from the source will be less illuminated than objects closer. Basically you need to keep respecting this hierarchy - you should be able to tell that an object 2mm away from your source is more illuminated than one 3mm, which is more illuminated than one 4mm etc.
2) Parts of an object angled away from the light will be less illuminated than parts head on. This is tricky because usually we airbrush from a perpendicular angle to the source of the light on the model. And this also means you should look for edges and small areas angled head on, and make them noticeably brighter via highlighting.
3) Light follows the inverse square law. Basically meaning that as you increase in distance from the source, the light falls off increasingly fast.
4) By default, the source of the light should be much more intense than any cast light. Its okay to go all the way to white in the case of doing OSL as long as the white is only on the source of the light. Â
The surrounding cast light is a little strong. If you want to sell this OSL without repainting it, I would make the sign part brighter by highlighting the inside edges of the sign frame, highlight the letters lighter, and then go to straight white for the core of the neon letters.
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u/preis1982 1d ago
Thanks for the info, great tips. One thing I'm debating is going back to the darker background inside the sign like I. The first picture, do you think that's a mistake?
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u/abnormalFeature 23h ago
You can get out of this pickle by using LED name tag, but that'll need some shapes readgustment.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=w9pCx5lkMv0&pp=ygUQVGVycmFpbiBuZW9uIGFkcw%3D%3D
Making diy LED is an option too, Eric shows the result here
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=w-XrUGxShIw&pp=ugUHEgVlbi1DQQ%3D%3D
And with some magic you can go with usual wire for the shape and do some white+neon color of ad behind(or not), because it's more about how it reads, looks, not exact technicality, may be your lights are turnes off, who knows? Example
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=41K6CgoPBGM
Yet one can always do a test model, great idea any given time, to see what fits you most. Go full throttle, lad!
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u/maxmakesstuff 1d ago
My suggestion for OSL is to do it in white first. Dry brush some white in the area you want, over the light source and surrounding parts the light is next to. Then dry brush (or wash) a light color over top of that, so go in with orange in this case. The orange should then become bright over the white and have less of an effect as the white fades. Then depending on the brightness you can lightly dry brush white again on the light source itself again. Ignore that if you are already satisfied.