Create environments that glow

When you first open Hypershade, three nodes are available by default in the Materials tab: lambert1, particleCloud1, and shaderGlow1.

Use the Shader Glow node for environment glows.

Shader glow from one surface can affect the intensity of another surface’s glow. For example, a large glowing surface that enters a scene may appear to cancel the affect of, or alter, the glow of a smaller surface in the scene. This phenomenon is caused by the Shader Glow’s Automatic Exposure setting.

To get the right glow and halo intensities using Shader Glow

1. Turn on Auto Exposure in the Shader Glow’s Attribute Editor (open the Shader Glow Attribute Editor by double-clicking the Shader Glow swatch located in the Post Process folder in Visor’s Rendering section).
2. Select a frame in which the halo and glow effects have the look you want.
3. Render the scene in Render View.

   The glow intensity normalization factor and halo intensity normalization factor are printed in the Maya command shell or DOS window. They look similar to this sample:

   glow intensity normalization factor = 0.0110171.
   halo intensity normalization factor = 0.0243521.
   

   These are the values Maya uses if Auto Exposure is turned off.

4. In the Shader Glow’s Attribute Editor, set the Glow Intensity and Halo Intensity to the values for the glow intensity normalization factor and halo intensity normalization factor.
5. Turn off Automatic Exposure.
6. Render the scene again at full resolution of your intended output.