I was shocked to hear Rod Reed say:

>The cylinder encloses the point of the light source.
>Regardless of what I do to the cylinder texture it always looks black. Can
>this approach going to give me the desired result? I have seen other
>postings that talk about "media" and "glow", should I be using one of these
>instead? I haven't gotten that far through the tutorial yet. Any advice is
>welcome, thanks in advance.
>Rod.
>
>PS here is the light source code as it stands now -
>  light_source {
>    <0,0,0>
>    colour White
>    looks_like {
>      cylinder {
>        <-.15,0,0>, <.15,0,0>, .01
>        texture {Glossy}
>      }
>    }
>  }
>
>

I've never done this specifically, but I had a similar problem when
looks_like was added.

The problem here is actually mental.  You're thinking that your light
source should look like the cylinder AND glow.  It won't just by
specifying looks_like.  Remember that a light source isn't visible by
itself, so what you get is what looks like a normal cylinder that
casts light, but doesn't glow.  You will need to experiment around
with a fairly hihg ambient on the cylinder to get it too look right,
then try some media effects inside the bulb portion to add that 'glow
effect' to the filament.

- Tim

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