Hi, 
I have been trying to work through a simple tutorial by thomas at the following page

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/tutorial/index.php?tutorial_id=150&page=4

I created a black/black alpha plane as mentioned and put on a light as stated though

1. I cannot seem to be getting the soft nature of light and the foggy/misty pattern reflective in the above scene. In my case its a straight light that seems to fall on the ground without creating that foggy-misty effect of the jungle. How can I resolve that. 

2. The tutorial asks to pick an atomsphere new orleans. Does it really matter what atmosphere you pick considering you are putting a black/black alpha plane on it anyways. 

3. Once i put an alpha plane it apprently gives some short of a black shadow on the ground Im not sure how to avoid that so my scene can match the tutorial 

Thanks for the help in advance

Volumetric lighting is pretty tricky and pretty tweaky. And Vue 6 "Godrays" (a similar effect) are even harder to achieve.

I have a tutorial on volumetric lighting:
http://www.art-head-start.com/free-stuff.html#tutes

_jc  'Art Head Start' e-book: Learn digital art skills $19.95
'Art Head Start.com Free chapter, Vue tutorials, models, Web Tutorials Directory.

The new orleans atmosphere has a very high contrast  and lots of haze, wich will show on the render, and will give the bluish colour to the black plane, even if the sky doesn't show because of the alpha plane. It's also an atmo that has very little ambient lighting, so the light coming from the volumetric spotlight looks as the main light source, I don't see any other reason for this atmosphere. If your plane creates shadows, move the sun or in the material editor of your alpha plane, uncheck "cast shadows" in the upper right corner of the editor.
About your spotlight problem, are you sure you made it volumetric? And did you add the gel mentioned in the tut?
Check Jim's tut on volumetric lights, it's very well done. And check any tut by the man JC, by the way, they're all very well done and easy to understand.

Thanks for the assitance guy. 

This is what I get though, I am still unable to get the lighting properly placed. I am attaching my first render on what is suppose to be something simliar to the tutorial. The lighting it seems can do wonders if placed properly or mess up a scene as in my case if situated improperly. 

Can you please suggest some things I could do to improve this particular sence from the viewpoint of lighting settings and arragements

Well, you didn't attach the render :)

oh my bad ,
Apprently it seems the file did not attach itself for being 500k or so in size. So perhaps I will have to retry it by shrinknig it but that loses it resolution. 

Will try it again after work 

Thanks

Ah shucks Bruno!

Looking forward to seeing your sample, Plancker 121.

A few things can wreck a volumeting lighting setup (they are tricky):

1. Competing light sources - start with a black sky and just 1 spotlight
2. Camera in the light cone - doint point the spot at your camera
3. Too much or too little volumetric intensity:
        Too much makes the cone opaque
        To little soesn't satisfy
4. I usually leave out that smoke/dust effect 

Here it the render, hopefully it attaches this time.

Ok, so I see that yourplane is lit by the spotlight, and since you applied a gel to the spotlight, the pattern is showing on the plane. You need to move the plane further away from the scene, it is too close, and shuts completely the perspective, and you need to place your spotlight so it doesn't hit the plane. Also, you should reduce the spread of the spotlight, the effect here lacks a little subtlety.

Agree with Bruno.

Also, real light beams are seldom so sharp-edged and most often slanted (not perfectly vertical). Also pretty unusual for water surfaces to be undisturbed. Haven't had time to study Thomas's tutorial - sorry. 

Lightng is a lot better, but there is something strange with the plants, they look very flat, I think your perpective is distorted, you should increase the camera focal., and add some bump to the water, it doesn't look natural without bump.
But you're on the right track.

Hi bruno,
I am trying to add bump to the water and apprently the effect does not seem to show up. Can you kindly suggest the steps required to add a proper bump (keeping the material same) its a greenish water material.

thanks

If you don't want to load one of the preset water materials, you can do this: add a sphere or any primitive to the scene, and give it one of the water materials that come with Vue, go to the bump tab of this material, right click te sphere rpresenting the bump function and choose copy function. Now go to the bump tab of your water, right click the sphere and choose paste function. You'll also need to adjust the size of the function to 1.5 in all axis, this is done right under the bum function preview sphere.
Of course this can, be done with the function editor, but maybe you're not ready yet to dwelve into it.

Water turns reflective at a certain viewing angle (which is why it looks blue by reflecting the blue sky - even though water is not blue itself). You should set the "Turns reflective with angle" slider for your water material for realism. Your scene's water would be rather transparent, not so mirror-like.

You also want to use the bump setting to control the scale of the waves on the water for realism. Distant water will have a lot more waves visible than nearby water. The more waves and reflectivity of the water, the longer the render time.

thanks for all the feedback.....

I will try to learn using the function editor with a new picture :)

I was wondering how do people end up adding text such as their name or website on the corner of a picture. I was playing around with the Vue text, but it seems to be 3D text and takes a lot of adjustment.

Is there any other simple program I can use to add a little note or txt on the picture ?

thanks

Yes, very large improvement - you're learning fast!

I use Adobe Photoshop - an expensive and hard-to-learn professional image editor - but the very best. I use it at least once a day (for Vue and web development and book writing).

PaintShopPro is the inexpensive alternate. These programs have "layers", like sheets of clear plastic. You open your Vue image, create a layer over it and add your text to that layer. Additional layers can be made into border lines, frames and special effects (such as glow around your text, etc.). You make whatever layers you want visible and move them around to center stuff, then export to your required image format.

Not nearly so difficult as some operations are in these programs.

While I do most of my image work  in Paint Shop Pro because I've been using it for a long time I'd look at Photoshop Elements (a cheaper cut down version of Photoshop) if I were looking for a package these days as Corel's (who now develop Paint Shop Pro) track record for developing software isn't great in my experience.  I got it bundled with some other software a month ago and it seems to be a pretty handy tool for a significantly smaller price.

If you want something free take a look at GIMP (http://www.gimp.org/).

Good idea Mark.
Adobe Photoshop Elements (under $100?) has about 90% of the functionality of the $700 Abobe Photoshop version. Little that's missing will matter to casual users. And i understand it also supports most or all Photoshop plugins (but if plugins are important to you, you should check their specs to be sure). I love the Alien Skin Plugins.