Autodesk Inventor

[#1]

Just looking for some good effects to put on an art piece. Some sections are very dark and I'd like to add some accent to them. I know that solidworks was some textures that emit light, I was curious if there was anything like that in Inventor.

[#2]

Have you tried playing with the environment lights?

[#3]

I've tried using those, but they just aren't having the desired effects.

[#4]

Appearances can emit light.  Have you tried creating an appearance that uses the Self-Illumination settings?

Sam B
Inventor 2012 Certified Professional

Please click "Accept as Solution" if this response answers your question.
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Inventor Professional 2013 SP1.1 Update 1
Windows XP Pro 32-bit, SP3
HP EliteBook 8730w; 4 GB RAM; Core™ 2 Duo T9400 2.53 GHz; Quadro FX2700M
SpaceExplorer/SpaceNavigator NB, driver 3.7.18
still waiting for a foreshortened radius dimensioning tool in Drawing Manager

[#5]

You should be able to put and direct lights in Studio to cover almost every option.

[#6]

Imagine an electroluminecent cord - this could be formed into any shape like some string and would provide a local glow to its surroundings along its path.  How could you do this with environmental lights?  Not to mention trying to animate this cord moving...

Inventor has a setting for emissive colour - this should be a setting to turn it into a light source, you know, to emit light...  It doesn't actually do this though, and just causes that part to be a bit brighter and doesn't transmit to any surroundings.  The default Inventor (2012 and earlier - not on 2013 and its new colours yet) colours compound the issue by using an emissive value with highly reflective parts - last time I checked, no matter how much I polished a mirror it didn't start giving off light...

To, to answer the OP, nope - despite suggesting it should be possible with emissive settings, it doesn't.

[#7]

It's possible in 2013.

Set a self illumination colour as shown in my image and ramp the luminance up quite high.

Make sure that when you render you use the one of the "Global Lighting" lighting styles.

You should end up with something like the image below.

[#8]

that's cool - good to see the emissive (guess it's now called luminence) can actual emit light

so, without knowing the OP's Inventor version it's either yes (for 2013) or no (2012 and earlier)...