Hello to everyone again. We've settled back home near Seattle,and here's a fast hello to all!!

I've looked online as time has allowed, but does anyone have any tips or insight into optimizing volumetric spotlights in Vue? I'm trying for a less grainy version of a spot with volz coming down through some of the new pine trees I bought from Corn3D. I have the scene set about where I want it with a volumetric spotlight for mood, but I keep getting images that are too grainy.Do Ecosystems with lots of trees (high poly count) tend to affect the fog in the lights? Has anyone studied this at all? The volz look fine till the poly count gets above 250,000,000 and then I get ultra grain.Anyone have any optimization tips that might save me from painting in the light in PS? I'm using the Lush Western Mountain set from Cornucopia.

BTW, I got picked for Pic of the Day at Cornucopia on my first submission. Kinda kewl. Same pic as I last posted here.. the coastal Tintern Abbey pic in my gallery. http://www.e-onsoftware.com/showcase/index.php?page=Day&Index=3017

Thanks in advance for any help here.I can post the WIP if anyone needs to see, but it's typical graininess in the light cone itself.I'm in Spectral Mode and not using any Metaclouds,etc and the Fog/haze are pretty low.I'm going for a painterly effect on this and need a smoother light effect.

The volumetric grain can usually be improved or eliminated by editing the light source and increasing the quality slider in the "Volumetric" tab. It also helps if you increase the anti-alias in the render settings (number of subrays and/or quality).

Note: as with most sliders in Vue, if you slide them with the mouse you get a certain maximum or minimum values but if you edit the numbers manually, you can go beyond these max/min numbers, in case you need.

I never saw any kind of deterioration of Vue with the increase of poly count, except for the sluggish behaviour (and the occasional crash) at extremely high numbers.

And congrats by the pic of the day at e-on. I also had about 9 or 10 myself already. :-)
It feels good to see our work recognized by the makers of the tool.

For one of my latest pics 'Gylden Tempest' I used a volumetric spotlight.  I really needed  this effect to be smooth so I  turned the quality setting right up in the specific light editor as Rutra has advised plus very high AA. Render time rocketed but if you're prepared to wait it's worth it if you want to kill the grain.

BTW, nice work with 'Pic Of The Day'!

I agree that when you get "grain" (sample rate too low in the render engine), you need to increase the "quality" slider(s) and maybe also add more anti-aliasing. Depends on the lighting type, materials (e.g. blurred reflections) and if soft shadows are used. There is more control available for Spectral lighting, for example.

My free tutorial on volumetric lighting has some useful tips - though not about "graininess".
http://www.art-head-start.com/free-stuff-tutes.html

Another option is to use a 3rd party program that removes digital noise - then you can render faster in Vue. However a fix inside Vue itself is best. Neat Image is an excellent 3rd party program used by photographers to remove digital noise.

http://www.neatimage.com/

jc - An interesting link about the digital noise, thanks.

Hi,

Where you say you put the AA right up, are you talking about the texture and object AA and if so which one did you put up and how high?

Having similar problems with my volumetric lights.

Thanks
Jon

Old thread, but anyone know?

Thanks
Jon

Sorry, didn't follow this thread, for some reason.
No, I was not talking about the texture AA. I think neither was Stormchaser. There's no texture in a volumetric light, so increasing AA there shouldn't have any results. I was talking about the the object anti-aliasing. In many cases, I raise the quality until 100%.
The quality slider in the volumetric light itself has the biggest effect, IMO. So, you should concentrate on this first, IMO.

The light's quality setting being raised in the lights itself did work for me.I'm getting closer to what I was after. I take it all the way up now.

Thanks :)

Yeah I have found that too, in the end my volumetric light settings were 8.0 and my AA was at max.

It achieved the result I wanted and looked quite good I thought :)

Jon

Hi,

Just one more question, is there anyway to prevent the volumetric light from affecting the sky, I have my light but because its so bright you can no longer need the sky.

Basically I have the volumetric light shining through trees, but the power is on like 160 to make it through all of them ,but now in the background all you can see is a white background where the light is so bright, the lens flare is off and I am running out of ideas, anyone got any good tips or tricks on how to get the light coming through the trees without ruining the background?

Thanks
Jon

Maybe you have too much haze or fog which is dispersing the light? Try reducing both to zero to see if this is the case and then increase until you have the amount you like.

Or maybe you're covering all the camera view with the light cone. Is the cone facing the camera directly? Maybe you can make an angle between the two, camera and light cone.
There are various possibilities, it would help if you post an image.