Lighting Issues

[tmt0009]

Hello,

I'm doing a rendering of a design and I'm needing to illuminate the color texture so that it shows through the screen and onto the surrounding parts.  I saw a tutorial where a guy was creating a camera display screen and so that's what I referenced. 

I set the material as "Emissive" and then put a color texture on it so that it looks like an LED number is shown.  I've been playing with the settings because I had to crank the intensity way up and then knock the brightness down to 0.1 so that it didn't over expose the image.  The problem I'm running into is that the only light seems to be coming from the edges of the part and this is a problem because this is an interior part of the model. 

I've attached a sample rendering of my current situation.  I've dropped the brightness of the environment down but it doesn't help.  One of my friends managed to make it work on his design, but the only advice he would give is "illuminate the image" but I have no idea how that works either.

Any help would be appreciated.  If there's a way to make the illumination project to the front instead of to the sides then please let me know.  Should I map it differently?  In my head I'm thinking that if I map it on the side maybe it will project correctly?

Thanks

Travis

[timbudtwo]

Super late, but oh well.

You might want to use individual IES lights for each emitter. LED's are very directional, especially when up close. They also wouldn't be arranged that closely in something with a digital readout, so if you had that many LED's it would be very blown out. What you have is more like an Electro Luminescent panel; it spills light everywhere. Or something akin to a VFD.

Try using IES as point lights and you will probably get the effect you are looking for.