BL I haven't tried this yet, but what about doing a variable trans on a cone with a stripey function and pointing the fat end straight at the camera? I've gotten some good effects by attacking my camera--things like putting a water ball around it for an underwater scene, instead of around my objects. So when I have time I'm going to try the cone thing for the rays. I tried multiple cloud layers with different funky materials and it looked simply horrible, btw. So I haven't been totally slacking on it! MC