How do I make a spot light in Poser 7 create a beam of light like the ones that come in a window into a room with dust or smoke in it?
Regards, Tom

http://www.nerd3d.com/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=7

Here you have a shaded preview of the room in Poser with the light boxes, simple geometry really, coming from the windows and their preview set to wire.

Here you have the same thing, totally viewport display here, with the shading turned on for the light boxes.

Above is a render of what they come out like using the basic setup method shown later...

Above is a render showing the same basic setup with some added clouds in the ambient color channel...

And last, here's the shader setup. It's actually really simple. Also  note that the objects this is applied to have cast shadows and raytracing turned off in their properties tab. Hope this helps! -Les

BTW: What bagginsbill has posted here is a great tutorial for getting true volumetrics in Poser. It's been my experience that render times with it can be pretty long, but it can be worth the wait. The method I posted is more inspired by game development art and is specific to times when you can introduce geometry into your scene to do the job. If you actually need the light rays to be dependent on "real" light sources, then what he posted is the way to go. Always good to get a number of different techniques in your trick bag though. :)-Les

Just made a PDF of that and printed it out for my binder titled: Poser Tome of Knowledge.

Les,

I can only see your first embedded image. I'd love to see the rest.

I like beam geometry. Very fast.

Hmm... they're all showing up here. I'll check from another system and maybe mention it to the admins. The images are hosted through my own forums, so maybe there's something there as well... I'll sort it out. Thanks. -Les

Thanks guys.
I think I am going to stick with what I know as far as lighting goes and that is in Vue.
So much for making a Poser version of my Shuttle Bay.
Kind regards, Tom

Very intriguing stuff guys, I'm gonna look into this!