colonelmasako
Active Member
Bummer. That's really quite strange that you couldn't get it to diffuse though.
Annisse, that's great, I can hardly wait to see the results you get with your LF tape. I had thought you already got it but that must have been your End of Line waitress costume. Pretty soon, you're going to have a hard time deciding which Tron Legacy costume to wear!
Solar
Theory: its a trick of your eyes and the light. Think of luminous flux (aka amount of light) as a bell curve, with the x axis the wavelength and the y axis your flux. A red source (~630 nm) is going to be a larger wavelength and on the edge of that bell curve, where in contrast green will be in the middle at around 550nm, at the top of the bell curve. So one problem is that red doesn't look very bright compared to blue or green. This is just how your eyes perceive it.
To make the reflection method work, you need something bright enough to reflect off your backing and project out, which is entirely dependent on the angle the light enters that reflection matrix. A piece of EL wire distributes its light in a 360 degree pattern, so its full brightness isn't concentrated enough to make an effective source for a reflector. And it really also depends on how well your backing reflects. Now as we see with Annisse's suit, if you drive your EL wire to the max, it works, but just not quite as bright as maybe you hope.
I imagine that results with the EL wire is that it glows, but very dimly, not as bright as you'd hope. As I've said, the best way to get this effect, especially with red, is to use a string of surface mount LEDs mounted on a flexible strip, the angle of those LED light cones is focused in ~45 degree, and at a very handsome 100mA per foot.
A common misconception with this movie: yeah, the suits glowed in the film, but the sheer brightness was ramped up with post editing. You can't expect your suit to light up a room easily, just be bright enough that someone can go "wow, that lights up, awesome!"