Lighting Tutorial

[kiwigav]

Hi folks.
Would love to learn about lighting up my models, so any LED, Fibre Optic experts out there?
If anyone can do a lighting for dummies, that would be great.

[WebbyNZ]

I have lit 2 kits, one came with all the bits so was easy, the other was an iron man figure for which I used led's etc from jaycar.
I have brought a couple do lighting kits for some sci if kits in the stash that come with everything.
Another option is eBay where you can find pre wired kits, often for railway modellers that are easily converted.

What are you hoping to illuminate

[kiwigav]

was going to light up the Tumbler Bat mobile that I am currently working on but have decided not to.
But keen to light up a couple of models yet to purchase.

[Stonkmer]

Hi Great Topic...

I'm really wanting to add some realistic and accurate lighting to my aircraft.
I know the Sci-fi guys are big into their fibre optic and adding LED lighting, so hopefully they can help us out a bit here..

I've started an Airfix Nimrod R1 and managed to do a little bit and experimenting a little. I managed to find a fibre optics shop online (can't remember for the life of me where it was again) that sells to the large room lighting industry, they had some "sample packs" available, this was basically a few meter long lengths of fibre optic cabling of different thicknesses. seems a good enough deal, if i recall it was about £5 for the pack.

I'm also wanting to add dimmed lights in the cabin but found that you get a bit of light leak through the plastic (and I imagine it would also illuminate through the paint.
The answer for me was to get some of Microscale's foil adhesive and apply normal kitchen foil, the added some black paint to absorb some of the light although I may decide to change this to a lighter colour a bit or/and add some interior.. not sure yet).

I've seen some lighting kits out there but they only seem to have the very basic navigation lighting... I'd like to expand it some more and add flashers and beacon lighting set to different rates as well as static lighting... Biggest problem, I'm not the greatest at Electronics.. More of a Mechanical background.

I'll put some pics up of what I have so far (although should really start a build thread on it I suppose)..

Any help welcome on the Lighting topics though, think it will really make models on shelves at night look good!!!!

Stonkmer
;O)

[chief5437]

Blimey! They are bright! Didn't think they'd show through the plastic. I've thought of doing this a few times, so a thread on your progress would be great. I've seen videos of kits with flashing/strobe lights all programmed with different timings, but they didn't say where to get them from!!!

Cheers dude!

[khimbar]

Lighting is fairly easy. Best way to light block is spray the inside black first then white.

There's a few good tutorials on Youtube.

[chief5437]

Lighting is fairly easy. Best way to light block is spray the inside black first then white.

There's a few good tutorials on Youtube.

Cheers dude!