I'm not trying to break the record in most started threads in a day, please forgive me I'm just curious about stuff I guess....

Well, I'd like a glow around a tube light, like a light sphere. But it seems like that effect can only be applied to bulbs or spots? I also tried a workaround, to make a cylinder primitive, then add a glow color to the shader. Nice try but it doesn't make the actual glow/sphere effect. Do you guys have any nice tips or tricks?

When I need a glowing tube; I design the tube, give it a shader with glow in it, use the aura effect found in the effects tab for the object, then an anything glows so it acts like a light.  Works great.  I just wish you had the options like that on a tube light to begin with.  I have never been able to figure out tube lights anyways.

Almost forgot.  Use a shader with the color of the desired light, about 20% shininess and 10% Highlight.  Give it a reflection of like 5%, and a transparency of 99%, Then just give it an index of refraction using the glass preset.  Thats it, always works great.

Quote - When I need a glowing tube; I design the tube, give it a shader with glow in it, use the aura effect found in the effects tab for the object, then an anything glows so it acts like a light.  Works great.  I just wish you had the options like that on a tube light to begin with.  I have never been able to figure out tube lights anyways.

Wow! Awesome! Thank you so much, brilliant! Works like a charm! I'm gonna stop cheering now before I begin to sound corny but you made my day.

But I agree, it's a bit strange that there's no aura/glow effect to other lights than bulbs or spots...

My main problem with actual tube lights is that you can't actually see the light, which is a big hassle.  If they made it's avatar an actual tube instead of the bulb avatar, then it might be useful.  There are some other issues with lights that I have in Carrara.  For instance, if you have a bulb which you want to have a glow sphere on, you don't have the aura option, but if you use the light sphere tool, the sphere completely ignored anything which might otherwise shadow it.  As an example, look at a simple old fashioned hanging lamp.  You create the lampshade which is attached to the ceiling by a cord of some kind.  Then you add the bulb and internal fixture.  Now most incandescant lamps have a subtle glow halo around them.  However, with the bulb you either have to forgo an actual light just to get the bulb to glow a bit with aura (which never looks natural for a lamp glow, or you need to add an actual light bulb.  Now this would work great except that when you add the light sphere, it even glows through the lamp cover on top as if it wasn't there.  They need to make a light sphere react to collission with an opaque object in the same way the actual light does.  And if your thinking why not use an anything glows, well, you should have the light sphere option with all types of lights but you don't.