okay; i been messing with this simple, five minute scene for a week. i cant get it the way i want. the spotlight might work if it didnt make that black circle. (and/or make the rest of the sky totally black outside the cone as well!) the point light is supposed to work fine, but it makes a lousy sun. so now i've gone on to trying to combine the sun with the point light. i STILL cant get thick beams like i want. if anybody thinks she/he can do this, let me know, i have the vue scene all zipped up and waitin for you to try it!

oh... on the left, the scene as currently renders. on the right, an artist's representation of more like what it should look like.

Sorry your'e still having problems. I like the effect of the second one though. It would be interesting to see it developed further. Rich

I have been messing around for days now with trying to get the same rayed effect out of the sun. I simply can't get it to work except on large land formations. If you figure it out, let us in on the secret.

Heya Bloodsong....my @ddy mail is tesign@magix.com.sg Please send it to me. Its ok...I have a purchased DAZ3d eagle. Bill

Hmm...

You know Steve, I got a sneaking suspicion you've been working A LOT with Vue 4... :) Looks great... :)

heyas; yes, small. i can get it to do that too. you dont get any cookies until you make the light/dark shafts much stronger. :) actually, i was wondering if i'm allowed to put up the scene with the eagle vob in it.... :/

Hi bloodsong I`ve had Vue4 for approx 4 days now, and i have been playing with almost the same scene. Thought i`d post this image after reading above post. Its a volumetric point light with a bitmap Gel applied. Let me know if you need any other info. All the best.

Heya!...bloodsong...forget about the scene file. I can get the same thing done here with my own eagle. If time allow any success, I pose it here...unless someone get here first :)

That's lovely, Capt! Bloodsong, the way I understand things, it should be okay for you to post the scene because: * the eagle VOB comes with Vue 4 * a person will need Vue 4 to open a Vue 4 VUE scene * a person will need Vue 4 to open a Vue 4 VOB object * a person will need Vue 4 to access Vue 4 MAT files Same if you were posting a file containing, say, a SolidGrowth Cherry Tree. I like what Steve got from it. I've found that contrast is real tricky in the volumetric atmospheres. You need to start with [ambient--sunlight] all the way up to sunlight, 98 or 100%. That's just where to start, as it doesn't do the job all by itself.

Attached Link: http://www.3dmenagerie.com/storage/eaglite.zip

a gel?? okay, i can try that. what gel? :) what kinda gel? what's it look like? all righty. the scene file is here: http://www.3dmenagerie.com/storage/eaglite.zip oh, i pulled the camera back a bit, so now its in the cloud spheres. might need to push those down a bit.

Downloading...will fool around with it tonight/tomorrow and hopefully learn something! ;)

Bloodsong, Downloaded and played with your scene. The pic on the left is your original render. As you can see i have had to move a few objects and darken the scene to make the rays more dramatic and visible. If this what you are after let me know. I dont have much time tonite to explain the technique, but i promise to post a full explanation tomorrow if this is the effect you want. All the best.

Wow, yes, Capt! I want to know how you did it, too! (Will be patient for when you have the time to describe it.) I haven't had much luck with it myself so far. I get rays okay (by replacing the sun with a volumetric spotlight, and removing the volumetrics from everything else), but they are not so delicate at yours. At this point, I've gotten sidetracked to figure out why they're doing what they're doing on my end. The effect makes it look like intense ambience mixed with soft shadows, which is weird, but I'll keep poking at it. :)

Bloodsong, Varian and anybody else who may be interested, this is my technique. One thing to bear in mind, it takes a lot of fiddling to get just right. Its a case of change a setting, render preview, change a setting, render preview and so on. The above image took approx 40 mins to get looking ok. Please remember, this is only one method, it is not a rule. I`m sure someone else may find a better or quicker option. If you do please post. * I remove all volumetric settings from the sunlight. I add a quadratic spotlight to the scene (better falloff) and turn on volumetric and gel for the light. Because of the spotlight bug which renders a horrible black area if the camera is directly facing the light, the spotlight has to be very carefully placed. Normally I place near the top and to the side of the object/s to receive the rays. In the above scene the light was placed to the left of the eagles wing and swiveled to the right. * To add the delicate rays seen above, I have found the image needs to be fairly dark.I could not achieve the same effect with the original atmosphere settings. So i tend to lower the various sky/Sun settings to first darken the image. You do not need to change by huge amounts, just gentle lowering of exposure, and then play with light balance and ambient light, again using small adjustments. Rays can be achieved in light sunny scenes, but do not look as dramatic. * I then add a bitmap gel to the Quadratic spotlight. Any bitmap will do, but i find a black and white or greyscale pattern works best. Its a case of experimenting here. Try the various bitmaps that come with Vue to see what effect they have. In the eagle scene i used one called "Wcaustic.bmp" (its a greyscale bitmap of a caustics type pattern). * Next I play with the intensity of the volumetric light setting, turning it up full and keeping an eye on the main camera preview. I gradually lower this until pleasing looking rays start to appear. You may also need to adjust the spotlights power, falloff and spread to achieve pleasing results. For the final render i boost the spotlights volumetric quality bost setting to 2 or 3 to achieve a better rendered image. The rays tend to look too grainy if the setting is left on none. Well, thats about it. To sum up, it takes about five mins to set up the objects and light and then loads of time playing with the atmosphere and spotlight settings. Hope this small post, points you in the right direction. I intend to publish my own website soon, with a gallery of my artwork and maybe some tutorials for Vue and other 3D packages. I will post the address when its ready. All the best Capt Morgan

heyas; outstanding! um... now can i have the scene back to play with some more? :) thanks a ton, capt!

Capt, when you get your website up, be sure to include this, too. Those directions are wonderful! I'm going to play with the quality-boost and see if that clears up the grain-effect I get in my copy of the scene.