Quote Originally Posted by Robbie View Post
I'm kinda torn about the gems...The gems are supposed to be magical and filled with energy...there's no other way to convey that and still have them emit light. In previous iterations back when I had it rendering in MAX I was unable to get the gems to appear "filled" with energy...I didn't really even like the clearer look...the clear gems look empty to me and I want them to be filled with energy you know? If anyone can think of a way to pull that off that would be great, but I'm leaning towards leaving it...I'll still tweak some more...but this thing takes a good 45 minutes to render as is.

Falconius, what are you talking about when you say divider?
The Divider:
Click image for larger version.  Name: GuildRose_Divider.jpg  Views: 37  Size: 56.7 KB  ID: 103711

As for the gem problem... Maybe if you doubled the object and deleted some faces and made those emmisive? Or made some sort of emmisive object inside them? I don't know. I think the emission shader uses a diffuse surface assumption and that is the problem (it may be necessary in order to emit light though *shrug* that stuff is beyond my ken). There is no mapping input for the node but maybe there is a node set up you can put in between? I think looking at peoples water shading node ideas may give you ideas ( https://youtu.be/XsRdns2G-z0?t=15m48s ). Alternatively have you tried putting lamps inside the gems? Does that sort of thing even work?

Yeah I'm really no good at figuring out shader problems, which is why this light emission thing is always a problem for me.

Quote Originally Posted by Azelor View Post
The Blender forums are dead? Have you tried here? https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions
There are a lot of unanswered questions but users can also answers using the comments even if the practice is not recommended.

45 min to render?
They aren't dead, just very unresponsive. Lots of new artwork or WIP threads are started for instance, but a lot of them end up only being one or two posts long. Direct technical questions are answered in the "support" section of the forums, but as often as not in a sort of brusque manner.

That said they are better than the Pixologic forums which have lots of new threads, but practically no responses. (besides the fact that everything going up there looks somewhat professional which discourages others).