An incandescent lightbulb, a kind of lighting that is rapidly fading into history.
There are two scenes in this file; a complete setup for LuxRender, yielding the same image as used in the preview. Modifiers have been applied in this scene. Plenty of light groups for using LuxRender at its fullest. The other scene contains the same objects, but with a very basic (Blender) render setup. In this scene, the screw and boolean modifiers for creating the lamp base have been left in place, for experimenting or forging it into another type of lamp perhaps?
BYOB: I think you're right, however the reason why I applied them in the LuxRender was just that the boolean takes some handholding to apply, and I wanted to provide one model variant that's plug-and-play for a novice (and another that remains fully tweakable). And I combined that with the Blender/LuxRender variants to end up with 2 scenes instead of 4 :-)
Here's my render: http://img442.imageshack.us/img442/316/luxbulbfinal.png
I hope you like it.
Jeffie: looks great, well done! The noise is really low, how long did you run it?
4 days * 16 hrs/day ( overnight and during work ) :)
Then, I gimp'd it. First despeckle, then about 1/2 hour hand tweak, and finally a gaussian blur.
Never said I was playing fair.
You don't have to apply modifiers for LuxRender AFAIK.