I was up last night trying to figure out of there was a way for 3DS max objects to emit light. I did some searching online, but found next to nothing about the matter, so I tried figuring it out on my own.

Having not really touched the software in years, I naturally had to re-familiarize myself with all the keys, strokes and whatnots, but that's not important.

Now, seeing as I wanted an object to emit light, I thought of no better example to use this on than a lightsaber core.
Needless to say, I pulled it off using Mental Ray(I love you, Zap) and varying shaders. I'm sure Zap knows what I'm talking about here, but let's not get entirely techincal just yet.

password: "tfn".

Now, if the video(that took an impressive 7 hours+ to render) isn't up to par, quality-wise, what you're missing is probably the faint light of the saber illuminating the surrounding 'man' and ground plane. It's not as bright as it could be, but several test renders were blown out of proportion, and had even longer render times, so in order to trim the amount of time to render out a video example, several compromises were made to intensities, photon samples and GI.

If you're wondering what's up with the glow, it's a simple glare done in Max. I tried applying some glow to it in AE, but as the quality and intensity of the ambient light was as low as it was, I opted out, since it was rendered nigh-invisible.

Some here might also notice I posted this on TF.n aswell, but the point is still there.

Seeing as I pulled this off(Not a HARD task, by any means, really), I was thinking of recording a video tutorial on how to do it, and if there's some interest, I'll get right to it.

What's the use of this? Well, instead of placing omnis all around the core of the saber, excluding this and that to make it emit light, a simple trick will make it do it all by itself, making it self-illuminated, and as for masking/rotoing a shot with this effect goes, all you have to do is isolate the blade, which is basically just one click in AE.