How Do I make things glow?

What I mean by glow is not just an emmiter shader that looks sort of bland and fake because it is only one color. I mean one as in the thing starts off really bright in the middle to dimmer on the outside… or vice-versa. Is there any node setup that can do that? I have heard of using light falloff, but I can’t control it that well. The objects I want to use it on are like glowing orbs, light bulbs, lasers, etc.

That’s done in post processing via compositing.

Usually you add that kind of thing in composite. Easiest way to get glow is to add the emission pass to your render layer, then in composite you blur it and add it back onto the rest of the render.

oh, I haven’t thought of that… then how do I do things like neon lights where it goes from white to… let’s say… yellowish in a well defined area? I know that it will involve color ramps and light falloffs, but I don’t know where those should go in the node setup

Light bulbs

One thing to remember when compositing – make sure your threshold value is high enough to get the glow to show up (i.e. when using the Glare node for example).