Thanks Jay

BuzzinFly, I'm saying to use lights as usual and have the the light surface only serve to give the light sources a physical representation. Pretty much what it says here in the help files.

As for glow in post, in my opinion its better this way because:

- Baking it into the raw render locks you into a certain look unless you re-render. It's a post process effect even inside Maya(which is why you can't see it until the render finishes)

- There is one shader glow in Maya so its the same behavior for all glows

- There are much better looking glow effects to be had in external packages