Saw this vision on my way home this afternoon but when I tried to Vue it I couldn't get the lens flare (random streaks) to reflect off the car roof tops. There should be many randon streaks bouncing off the roof tops, side and corners. I have tried different things including placing many lights (but could not get enough to satisfy the image) and also reproducing the body of the car in glass and placing it 1mm above the actual car (as in this picture)... but still no lens flare reflection. Any ideas. Thanks, sacada.

How about making the car more reflective? Also, if you cant do it in vue, have you got photoshop or something you could manually add reflections to your car rooftops? It might not look as good but it might work. Hope this helps, AlphaOmega1

As far as I remember lens flares in Vue only apply to light sources. To get a lens flare from light reflected from a surface you would need to place some light sources at or near the reflecting surface to simulate the reflected lights' lens flare. In a similar way, because of the type of rendering Vue uses, if you want to simulate a lighting set up with, for example, a subject lit by a single light source with a refletor used to bounce some light back onto the subject you have to place a light source for the main light source and light sources to represent the reflector. Hope this helps

Thanks for the replies. Is is a shame that it is a limitation of Vue as I had quite a few ideas utilising reflecting lens flares. I don't ever do post work as I always like to push the limits of the renderer, but maybe post is somewhere I could look into later.

Well, since lens flares are basically internal to the camera, seeing them reflected in objects in the scene would not be particularly realistic.

Thalaxis, it depends what the effect that is desired is: A reflection of a lens flare, which as you say is an internal lens effect and so isn't reflected by surfaces in a scene, is unrealistic. A lens flare from a bright reflection, which does happen in real life because the surface reflected light can cause a lens flare, is realistic.

The lens flare caused by a bloom is still a lens flare. It sounds to me like you're describing two different effects, and using the same name for them. I think that the "hot spot" effect that you are describing is known as a bloom, and the reason that they can generate lens flares is that as far as a camera is concerned, it IS a light source. All it sees is photons, after all :) This does not address the initial post however, which is what my first reply was intended for. That described a different goal from what your suggestion is a solution for.

Terminology may be wrong but effect is the same. What I am seeing is random streaks from highly reflective surfaces such a cars, chrome etc. This could be referred to as "Glitter", "hot spot" or "bloom". It is a natural effect as you can see it with your eyes and don't require a camera (especially around sunset - 1 hr). There is an actual glitter plugin in Lightwave that produces this effect but it looks as though nothing available for Vue.

Photoshop? :) I can't think of a good "in Vue" alternative, but then I'm hardly an expert with Vue at this point :/

Thanks Thalaxis. I'm not interested in post work. Will think of something.

I'd like to know when you do :)