what's the best way to create a glowing light?

[moth0027]

I was wandering what was the best of of creating the glow that a light gives off without using a lens flare.

I'm sure there are many ways of creating this effect but was looking for something that won't effect the rendering time too much and would create a glow around the light source even if it was viewed from the side and the source itself was not visible (like a light receded in a ceiling, if you know what I mean)

[toby]

"volumetric lights" in the lights' properties panel

[Elmar Moelzer]

There are a few ways:
Lensflares, volumetric lights, glowing objects, etc, or even combinations of them.
CU
Elmar

[riki]

If you have an object and you want to make it glow, just go to the Advance tab in the surface Editor and enter a value for 'Glow' then head over to the Effects panel and enable Glow Intensity.

[kevman3d]

Another trick you can use is to use gradients on transparency and luminosity of an object, with the input parameter set to 'Incidence angle'.

See it used a few times... Works fast, and looks pretty good! (No lighting, volumetrics or lensflares needed!)

Here's a really quick example I whipped up - The other cool thing is you can get funky and experiment with colour gradients to give interesting fall off colours in the glow itself... :)

[moth0027]

Thanks people. The effect I was looking for came from a combination of volumetric lighting (for the ball of glow around the light) and 'glow' (for that extra glint when the actual bulb became visible by the camera).

I haven't had a chance to try using an object with gradients applied to the transparency and luminosity chanels but it sounds like it could give a similar effect to volumetrics with the advantage of a more customizable look to the glow.

Thanks for all the suggestions.