Make It Neon Text!

Hey all!

This Instructable aims to show all participants a great way on how to write and submit an Instructable for the Make It Glow Student Contest.

In this example, we'll be using Autodesk Maya but the principles remain the same for any software.

For this example, we'll be creating a very basic lighting setup using text. In my case, I'll be rendering with Redshift inside of Maya!

As far as supplies, those are all the assets I need!

Using the theme of the challenge, lets create a practical example of making a render GLOW.

1. By using Maya's built in tool of adding text as geometry, we can customize how we want our text to look by changing the font, size, and even topology.
2. Next, we need to make the purpose of the render speak the loudest. By using lighting, we can ensure the importance of the text to the viewer, without causing too much visual clutter.

By using a plane and extruding it's edges upwards, we now have this bowl liked shape that we can use to help create a sense of scale to our text.

Although simple, its a common practice when lighting assets in product photography. This really helps adding that extra sauce to the render by having the subject properly lit.

This is a simple node based setup, when texturing in Redshift.

The textures were gathered from PolyHaven, and by utilizing their free 4k texture downloads, we can get extraordinary detail on the ground, since our camera is up close!

After the node setup was complete, it was time to start lighting and making this render POP!

And here is the final!

You may notice a subtle light to the right of the image, and that is a creative choice I made to make the audience feel that there is more to the world than just the text. It adds story, curiosity, and great engagement to the render!

After some final post processing effects and minor touchups in Lightroom, I'd say the render is not too bad for following the theme of the challenge!

Although this was a simple example for the Make It Glow contest, I hope you all learned a thing or two when writing your submission. Don't forget to document your process!

Shoot for the stars, know your strengths and work with them. I've participated in many challenges and I saw the best results when I worked with my strengths rather than my weaknesses. We want you to have fun with this, and of course, grow together as artists!

Have fun!