Simulating a monitor/TV backlight with a custom screen texture

Blind Owl

I can change the default texture no problem, but I can't figure out how to add a backlight glow so the screen looks like a monitor and not a framed picture. Ideally, if a character was wearing glasses the screen would be reflected in the lenses.

I've seen it done, most likely in a Poser render, but I don't know how to accomplish it in DS (with iRay).

Any help would be appreciated.

----Quickie edit/afterthought: I should mention that I've tried several emissive shaders, which light up the screen OK but blot out the image (i.e. the custom texture).

Fishtales

Put the texture image in the Emissive channel and adjust the light to suit.

Blind Owl

Aha! Thanks, Fishtales, that was the missing piece of the puzzle. 

SpottedKitty

Note that it's very easy to white-out the emissive image if the light's set too bright. Set the Emission Temperature to white (6500K) unless you want a colour cast on the screen, set Two Sided to Off (you don't want to light up the inside of the TV... probably) and start with low-ish values of Luminance until you think the render is coming out bright enough. Don't forget to look at the Luminance Units parameter, the wrong one can mean you have to use huge numbers in Luminance.

Blind Owl

And thanks, SpottedKitty. I managed to find out how to add a luminance channel to the monitor mesh I'm using (because it's very accommodating: it doesn't cut off or invert screen textures), but didn't know about the two-sided thing. I'll be playing around with it some more after I finish kegging my latest batch of homebrew.