Create a glowing neon sign
Posted on 09. May, 2009 by Andrew Price in Compositing, Lighting, Modeling, Tutorials
Perfect for advertisements, logos and animations! This tutorial teaches you useful techniques such as modeling with curves, creating a glow effect and making a curve emit light.
Today we’re going to learn how to create this cool neon sign:
The tutorial will take approximately 30 minutes to complete, and you will learn the following:
- Modelling with curves
- Make a curve emit light
- Isolate a render layer
- Using glow and glare effects
Ready? Let’s begin…
Creating the Neon Tube
Add a Bezier Circle and move it to last layer. This will be the radius of our tube.
Add a Bezier Curve to the first layer, and make the Bev Object “Curve Circle”
As you can see the result is circle is far too big for our curve, so enter the edit mode and press Alt+S to scale it down to a more realistic size.
Forming the letters
This step is by far the most time consuming task. Using your path forming skills, form the shape by adding and arranging handles to suit.
If you are new to curves, you might like to check out the BlenderWiki curve guide.
But if you want to wing it, these are the important keys to remember:
Ctrl+Click – Add handle
R – Rotate handle
G – Move handle
Ctrl (whilst rotating) – Rotate in increments of 5 degrees.
Repeat this for the rest of the letters. To save time, try duplicating the first letter and moving the handles around as needed.
Half an hour later...
Adding the neon material
Select your first letter and add a new material as follows:
Rather than selecting each letter one by one and applying the material we are going to use the ‘Make Links’ function to save time. Hold down Shift and select the rest of the word, making sure you select the first letter last. Then hit Ctrl+L and click Materials from the popup menu.
Because the word ‘guru’ in our sign is a different color, we are going to be assigning a different material to the blue one. Select the first letter and add the blue neon material we just created. Click the number next to the material name to make it a single user and rename it to PinkNeon. Then change the color as follows:
Just like we did above, hold down shift and select the rest of the letters in ‘guru’ and press Ctrl+L and select Materials. Each letter should now have a material and be looking something like this:
Creating the highlights
To give the neon tube a more three dimensional appearance, add two spotlights and position one above the words and one below the words as follows:
Set the energy for the top spotlight to 0.9 and 0.4 for the bottom spotlight and select ‘Layer’ for both. This will make the spotlights only affect the neons, instead of the entire scene.
Making the Neons emit light
Add a lamp and parent it to the first letter by first selecting the lamp then the letter and hitting Ctrl+P. Select the letter and go to the Editing Panel (F9) and select ‘CurvePath‘
Clear the origin of the lamp by pressing Alt+O. The lamp should have snapped into place at the start of the curve.
With the lamp still selected go to the Object Panel (F7) and select DupliFrames and set DupOff to 1
This will create duplicates of the lamp along the curve. The DupOff value decreases the number of those duplicates by half so there aren’t so many.
Go to the Shader settings (F5) and change the color and energy settings as follows:
Make sure you click 'Layer'
Now if we render the neon against a plane we should see a faint glow.
Perfect!
Repeat this step for all other letters. Then select all the lamps you just created (making sure the lamp you created first, is selected last) hit Ctrl+L and select ‘Lamp Data‘. That will make every lamp have the same data, so if we want to change the lamp settings in the future it is a lot easier.
Finally move all the spherical lamps to the second layer. The first layer should only contain the words and the spotlights we created earlier.
Your scene should now look like this:
Creating the scene
The scene you want to create is entirely up to you, but mine was essentially two planes, one for the floor and one the wall. For added realism, I also made a metal frame and added some cables as well as black neon backing tubes, but this is optional. Once you have your scene setup the way you want, move everything to the second layer so that the first layer only contains the neons and highlighting lamps.
If you want the exact textures I used for the wall and floor you can download them here: Floor texture – Wall texture
Your scene should now look like this:
Creating the final composition
Click the Render Layers tab in the Scene Panel (F10) and change the name of the scene to ‘Neon’.
Add a new scene by selecting ‘ADD NEW’ from the drop down menu. Change the name of this layer to ‘Scene’. In the second row of layer boxes, deselect the first layer and select the second layer instead.
We are now going to switch over to the node compositor, so change the 3d view to the ‘Node Editor‘.
Click the button with a picture of a face on it. This will switch from Material Nodes to Composite Nodes
Delete the connection between the layer and composition by dragging your mouse over the connection. Then add two blur nodes (Add>Filter>Blur) with the following settings:
Merge the two blur node effects by connecting them to an AlphaOver node (Add>Color>AlphaOver) and set the Fac value to 0.60
Add a Glare node (Add>Filter>Glare) and connect it to the renderlayer with the following settings:
Now we are going to connect the Glare node with the output from the two blur nodes, so add another AlphaOver node and set the Fac value to 0.50. This will make the blur glow effect not as strong:
Now add a Mix node (Add>Color>Mix) and from the drop down menu select Screen. Then connec it with the output from the AlphaOver node, and the output from the render layer.
Now add an RGB curve (Add>Color>RGB Curves) and create a slight ‘S’ shape with the curve. This will increase both the brightness and contrast, giving it a more vivid glow.
We are now going to adding the render layer which contains the Wall and Floor. So go to Add>Input>Render Layers, and change the active layer to scene.
Now add an RGB curve (Add>Color>RGB Curves) after this layer and bend the curve down slightly in the middle which will make the scene slightly darker.
We are now going to connect the two scenes together, so add another Mix node (Add>Color>Mix) and again, change it to Screen from the drop down menu. Connect the output from the two RGB curves like so:
For an added touch of step we are going to add a lens distortion node (Add>Distort>Lens Distortion). This will mimic a reversed fisheye lens and add some slight chromatic abbreation. Connect the output from the last AlphaOver node to the lens distortion node and apply these settings:
Connect the output from the Lens Distortion to the Composite node and your composite is complete!
The finished setup (click for big)
Now go to the Scene panel (F10) and hit ‘Do Composite’ then render! If you can see a blue background at all, then you will need to change that to black in the World settings panel (F5).
If you enjoyed this tutorial, please leave me a comment. If you got stuck at any steps along the way let me know and I’ll be happy to help.
89 Responses to “Create a glowing neon sign”
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16. Jun, 2010
[...] http://www.blenderguru.com/create-a-glowing-neon-sign/ — the past few days, I’ve been trying to learn Blender. This really got me started on letters, title intro graphics, etc. [...]
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Miguel
09. May, 2009
Nice!
Is it possible to something like this for realtime 3D? I mean, baking textures and applying to the mesh instead of traditional rendering?
Andrew Price
09. May, 2009
Miguel,
Were you wanting to use this in a game? Because you can definately bake light and shadow passes, but I’m sure about the glow effect. I’d check the game forum over at blenderartists.org on that one, as I’m not too familiar with what can and can’t be brought into realtime. ;)
Miguel
09. May, 2009
Not exactly a game, but a Virtual Set.
I know I can bake light and shadows into a textured surface, but I wanted the glowy lights and haze too ;)
I’ll see if I can get any help at the RT forum, Thanks
Eric
09. May, 2009
Thanks for a nice tutorial!
There are a couple of steps missing (at least in version 2.48a) that kept me, a total beginner, struggling for some time.
- The world color needs to be set to black
- Do Composite needs to be enabled before rendering
Andrew Price
09. May, 2009
Good call Eric! Forgot about those steps, I’ve added them now.
Xari
18. May, 2009
Thanks for the tutorial.
I follow you from Spain.
dambs
20. May, 2009
Thanks you..
Clear and great result…
JFC
23. May, 2009
Really very good tutorial
Reyn
24. May, 2009
Thanks so much for this easy-to-follow and detailed tut, Andrew. I would have settled for Radiosity and could have a very time-consuming setup just to achieve this kind of effect.
And yet again, the Duplis did a fantastic job of silently halving our setups. ^_^
Very creative! Thanks. =)
JackieNP
26. May, 2009
Very nice tut!
I can learn many things in only one tutorials!
Thanks so much.
Mpu.Bater
26. May, 2009
Thank you very much!
Really simple but very useful,
it can be applied for many things!
Tio Ilmo
02. Jun, 2009
Your tutorials are very usefull!
I followed the Wall Texturized Brick Tutorial using Nodes and it was so fantastic like this one.
If were possible create more tutorials related to Texture and Material because it is really difficult to find good ones available. Skin, Gold, Wood, Water etc…
Using Nodes to create Procedural Materials and Textures is really a nice way to make advanced Blender settings became easy to understand.
Regards,
Tio Ilmo
Corniger
02. Jun, 2009
Why did it take me 6 months to find this site?? As tutoriac I should have discovered this much earlier! Part of my signature now :) Awesome! Simple, yet full of new stuff to take in!
Cheers, your latest RSS follower!
Craigsnedeker
06. Jun, 2009
Awesome tut, but at the end I render it and it’s… black! Do you know what I did wrong?
Craigsnedeker
06. Jun, 2009
I fixed it, but I had to turn off “Do Composite”
Andrew Price
06. Jun, 2009
Hi Craigsnedeker,
Can you post a screenshot of your node setup? The reason the render turned out black was probably because the Composite node is not connected to anything.
George Guevara
08. Jun, 2009
Great tutorial!
You demonstrated the use of some nice tools/features within Blender, WHILE having a cool result. Thanks, again. Now, I’ll try to make use of some of these techniques in my own work.
earlthegrey
10. Jun, 2009
Congrats Andrew, really nice Tut. :)
Instead of using a Circle as Bevelobject i just used a Beveldepth of .050 with an Bevel Resolution of 4 to create the Neontubes.
Earl
mofx
11. Jun, 2009
Lets say that instead of creating text from a curve I’m using a tube, cylinder, sphere then what do I choose instead for this step?
“Add a lamp and parent it to the first letter by first selecting the lamp then the letter and hitting Ctrl+P. Select the letter and go to the Editing Panel (F9) and select ‘CurvePath‘”
I assume the CurvePath is used in dupliframes, to distribute the duplicate lights? Correct?
shadowphile
13. Jun, 2009
to mofx: if you are using a mesh (2D) instead of curves, then the most flexible approach would be to use particles, and a lamp object instead of points or halos for the particles. Play with the settings to get a nice distribution of particles over the surface of the mesh, then use layers, groups and/or copies to separate out the different renders layers as was done above.
You might also parent a curve to your objects and use that, as long as the objects aren’t too fat.
You also might use Dupliverts, putting a lamp on each vertex, but the result and quality will be directly tied to the mesh geometry, not very flexible.
Yah, CurvePath only applies to curves uisng Dupliframes. Won’t work for an mesh because a mesh is 2D.
MANTSOA
21. Jun, 2009
very good work!!! i’d like to do the same things? can u help me?
FunkyDude
21. Jun, 2009
I got a black screen too at first, but then I realized the distortion settings were wrong, I distort set at 1 instead of -0.1
Thanks for the tutorial!!! These are great!
Instead of making each letter I set the text in Illustrator, then exported/imported an SVG into blender.
http://www.webkitstudio.com/starstryker.jpg
Andrew Johnston
29. Jun, 2009
To add to FunkyDude, you could eve use inkscape (which is also opensource) to set the .svg and then importing it into blender.
Great tutorials, great site! Recommended reading for fellow 3d enthusiast and blender heads
Gekke Pop
29. Jun, 2009
Andrew,
Can this be used as a still and a animation or only a still image? Because that would be cool.
Gekke Pop
Aether
17. Jul, 2009
Um, hi. I have a lil’ question. I have modeled my text / name, parented a lamp to it using CurvePath, Snapped origin, though, when I select dupliframe / increase DupOff Nothing happens. Please reply
ShhadowZ
09. Sep, 2009
Man.. I recently came across ur site. Your work is awesome. Keep posting.
Nd thanx for this tutorial. ( I modified the neons to write my gf’s name.. she loved it ;) .. thnx ya..)
BenU
02. Feb, 2010
I also built my paths in illustrator and exported as SVG. What’s great about this approach is you can build it all off of a single path:
1. Make a single path in AI, all curvy-like
2. Increase the stroke size dramatically
3. Outline those strokes
4. Tweak the shape so you now have two parallel paths.
5. Stroke the two paths with another large stroke
6. Outline and tweak those two paths, and you have four parallel paths
7. Now all you have to do is make the curvy link between the paths, and you’re done.
I also found that doing the “simplify stroke” feature in AI helped before importing the SVG into Blender, especially for more complex paths.
Thanks for the excellent tutorial!
Andrew Price
08. Feb, 2010
@BenU
Very interesting workflow! Never thought of using AI. Glad you liked the tut :)
newbie
03. Mar, 2010
i love ur work…
ash
07. Mar, 2010
i do not know to change the grid size , because whenever i press alt+3 it does work .
algerien et oui
13. Mar, 2010
then we can do that in something like a game for example or a film that is true if yes then it’s good news, thank you for respond to and tutorial ++++++++++++
bigfoot
16. Mar, 2010
hey,
incredible tutorial, really intense. just wondering, is the link for the download broken?
Can anyone check it?
Rich
18. Mar, 2010
Just incredible man!!! thanks
From Mexico :)
gio
21. Mar, 2010
i cant tipe “curveCircle” in BevOb in the second step of this tut… why?
gio
21. Mar, 2010
“CurveCircle”
gio
21. Mar, 2010
….and hey Price! i saw same of your tuts and works, u are a likable guy and your projects are very cool, bye man
Andrew Price
22. Mar, 2010
@gio That means that in your scene, CurveCircle is not the name of the object. It needs to be the exact name of the curve circle.
gio
22. Mar, 2010
uhm, im a noob, i started to use blender 2 days ago heheh… thx ill try again
gio
22. Mar, 2010
ok the name of the circle is “Circle” so i’ve to type Circle right? but it says me “Bevel/Taper object must be a curve”…
sorry for this banal questions ><
thx anyway
gio
22. Mar, 2010
Arrrgh! i did it.. didnt work because i used Bezier Circle… with NURBS Circle it works… ok now i continue in this tut but im quite sure i ll find new cramps.. anyway thx again for the answer and prepare for more hehehe bye bye
James Miller
22. Mar, 2010
Thanks for the great tutorial This helped me get to grips with the lighting a lot more.
Thx very much for a great tutorial
Devin Kimmey
22. Mar, 2010
this is really cool. Is there any way that i can make it flicker on and of in a animation? if there is then can you tell me please? thanks =D
Devin Kimmey
22. Mar, 2010
the reason i asked is because i like to make cool intros for school projects. it would be cool if i could make it start off black, then flicker, then a big flash, then have it stay on. im kinda new to this as well so i has to learn how to make the flash. is there a way to do that too? thanks
Gianni Camilleri
22. Mar, 2010
Very nice man. any tips on how to make the curves look straight on the letters?
ricardo
31. Mar, 2010
Hi, well i got trouble on lights power, my lights didn´t have enough power to illuminate my hole scene, my lamps just light little bit around them but my floor and wall didn’t recive enough light. what could it be?
dilipkkanteti
31. Mar, 2010
nice tutor
11&2
07. Apr, 2010
For my scene I just created two panes and mapped textures to them. That worked (rendered the expected result) until I applied your node editor part after that I can only see the neon bars nothing else. :-(
Help please.
steve
08. Apr, 2010
U should make a video and post it on youtube
Christian
22. Apr, 2010
A German User. My English is no good.
I understand the step with Lamp komplet.
Can you little Steps make, to position the Lamp in to the 3D room?
Thanks for you little help. :D
I hope.
Bye Bye
P
24. Apr, 2010
I set up a scene using these techniques and wrapped my neon text around a sphere. However, when I render, the part of the neon text that should be curving behind the sphere shows up behind it. Any idea as to how I’d fix this?