Please, I need your help.

My goal is to create atmosphere in a scene: light is coming into a room and I want to see the atmosphere in this light: dust etc. And the air should be a bit "thick". I think you get the point.

How can I create that? I thought about using a light cone, but that looks artificial IMHO and destroys the whole scene.
My scene is lit by a HDRI map and a spot that I put far away from the scene's center, so that it shines through the window into the room.

Now all I need is the atmosphere.

Would someone help me, pretty please?

Thank you!

I'm not sure I am at all entitled to give advice on the subject, but I'm going to try and offer what I can:

For the cone, what I found to be most useful is to turn 3d shadows on and to increase falloff to about 2-7% (in post cases) depending on the scene. I would also render it on a separate layer and composit it adding some blur, that allows you to get away with minimal increase in rendertime. Otherwise you'd have to up the quality of the cone, which, with GI already ON can get pretty expensive time-wise.

For the dust I used volumetric clouds before (turning on turbulance), but I can't say that I'm entirely satisfied with the results. But if you want to go that way, I found that the coulds included in Howie Farke's Lake scene can be a good starting point, but you can also just play with the settings.

Here is an image I did using the cone (but no dust):
http://antarann.deviantart.com/gallery/#/d4ehita

Hello I do mine in post.

Method : Do a few renders and hide the forground elements in one render. Do one with just the forground elements - then 'paint' the atmopshere in between the layers.

I use these brushes http://www.daz3d.com/i/shop/itemdetails/-/?item=8384&_m=a

Doing the different renders with alpha ticked  is also good cause you can zap up the forground elements with 'levels' adjustment.

The other thing to try in carrara is dropping a cloud in your scene and using it to fog some of the more distant elements. Won't do a light cone effect I don't think though

You could also use planes with tansmaps of dust on them, but this one won't give you a light cone. I guess you could drop a plane in with the light cone painted on it? 

this tool will do it for you http://www.daz3d.com/i/shop/itemdetails/?item=4729

You might have to change the texture maps though

plenty of examples of the first method on my blog eg here

http://andrewfinnie.blogspot.com/2011/09/pushing-boundaries.html

sorry posted same time as previous poster

Antaran, why shouldn't you be entitled to give advice?!?!?!? Everybody can help and you solved my problem!

Thank you, the light cone setting with the 3D shadow worked instantly and I have to say that your scene resembles mine a lot regarding the POV and Room and light idea :o) 

I even didn't need to render the light as a separate layer, everything renders smooth even with GI.

THANK YOU! Now I can keep on working doing a happy dance

Oh sorry, headwax, I wrote my answer to Antaran while you posted and haven't seen it.

Thank you, too, for your help, I'll keep this for the next image and then try my hands at postworked atmosphere.

Jedi, try to use volumetric light (cone light) with IES, works very great.

Yes, Marcello, I've done that with the light cone now, thank you :o) But no IES (sorry, I still don't know what this is....)

Mark, I don't get this - you've put in a HDRI and where did you put the shader? On the light? Sorry, seems that my mind is blocked at the moment blush

Btw, that's my image right now with the light cone:

have you tried with the light parameter 3d shadows? (in the light cone parameter section)

sometimes ticking inverse looks cool 

nice image mark!

CG is always a trade off of time and effort. I've put together a rough sample of a light cone and my stupid shader trick to imitate volumetric lighting. 

Carrara does not have volumetric lighting but it does have some volumetric effects like the light cone and 'god-rays'. So, my shader trick does a pretty good job of faking volumetric lighting but it would require you to composite in the background image/HDRI image to complete the picture. 

Compositing is how the game is played in the real-world so don't feel bad to do that. It has been suggested that you can do the haze/light rays in post production, and that is completely legitimate. However, I much prefer to have the software do as much as possible. Compositing in a background is much easier than re-touching in light effects. 

If you like the Shader Trick image, just let me know and I'll tell you how it's done. 

Mark

Beautiful image.Thank you for sharing it. I am very glad I could help. :D

Sorry, Mark I didn't see your last response before posting mine (forgot ro refresh). So I have to post again...

Even if Jedi_Padawan doesn't want to know how the shader trick is done, I definitely do! :) Please share.

I love your creative work-arounds and tricks. I wish there was a special place somewhere listing them all -- not the streaightforward explanations as in tutorial collections and not a tiny subset as in the "Dark Arts", although I dearly love both series and use them as reference very often, but a full collection of just tricks, shortcuts and workarounds...

@Antaran: Thanks a lot!

@Mark: Yes please, I'd like to know how this is done. And like you, I prefer that the software does the job. Postwork is the last option for me (I'm not very good at postwork....)

Mark I too would like to see how you go about making a Atmosphere. I have been working on trying to make a ski dome to use in Daz4. I have Carrara so I can work in that and see if I can save it out and put it in Daz. 

thanks Mark for any help

glenn

well I'd love to learn another trick!

I just did a run though shining a spot through a cube with a terrain shader in the alpha channel. Worked reasonably with the light cone - seemed to clean it up a wee bit.

Especially adding blinds to the spot?

First, just a standard light cone plus GI.

It's just a standard light cone but I turned up the intensity to 200 and changed the color of the light to gray and turned the intensity down to 10%.  Then I put in an additional normal spotlight set to 100%.

I really like this result plus it gives you a lot of control of things (plus there's GI).

I also did another run at this and set the light cone light so that it would only interact with the balls.  The result wasn't very different but it is an interesting twist.

I did this because I like to have a severe angular falloff when using a spotlight and I didn't want the light generting the cone to leave a sharp edge on the floor (worked!).

Wow, very interesting options, thank you! I think this is definitely some good material for C3E tips and tricks section.

Here is a tutorial about creating indoor volumetric lighting in Carrara. You can find it here. 

Thank you very much, Mark! Your help is highly appreciated. I'll work the tutorial through within the next days.

ominousplay, your work is beautiful! Thanks for sharing it with us!

Is the fur postworked or is it Carrara hair? It looks really decent.

Thanks Jedi_Padawan - it is an older image.  It is all Carrara, no post work... I modeled the salmon and used the Daz seal.  Bubbles are replicated on a vertex object that is not visible.  Gels on a light cone with lots of turbulence. 

I have been focusing on painting lately, but I am using my 3D modeling skills in my painting.  Here is an example:

I learned a lot from working in Carrara.  My compositions improved.  My understanding of lighting and negative space also increased by working with 3D applications. 

This painting is not finished yet.  Suggestions appreciated (even though this isn't a painting forum).

Robert

Robert, I can't see the image :o( Seems that the link is broken?

i'll try again

@Robert: The Kraken! Abandon ship! ;o))))

This is definitely a very creative way to combine 3D and a real painting. It makes it really life-like and is definitely an eye-catcher. Excellent work!!!!!!

@Mark: Thank you so much for the amazing tutorial! It really is a great way to do the atmospher, but I'm having a little problem. May I ask for your help again?

The background HDRI is always very washed out in the window, no matter which settings I try - and I tried a lot, really!

Do you have any recommendation for this? THANK YOU!

Sassy

@Jedi, 

The quick answer is to drop in another background image that has similar lighting so it looks like it belongs. 

HDRI maps, especially free ones, are a real mixed bag. The free ones are usually terrible if you want a background quality image because the are all low, low resolution and only really suitable for reflections and not back plates. Good HDRI files are usually between 30 and 100 megs each and sometimes even have corrresponding high resolution backplates to go with them for backgrounds. 

If you would like some decent, free HDRI maps, try here: http://www.openfootage.net/  Really super stuff. And if you want pay for some nice ones, I personally use several sets from this vendor: http://www.doschdesign.com/products/hdri?subrubrik=67

It usually comes to down to, "you get what you pay for." - the cruel reality of CG. Open Footage is the exception to that rule but they have a more limited selection. 

There are some other good vendors of HDRI maps but I've found that after I've gotten a good outdoor, indoor and studio set, I really don't need much else unless there is a specific location I need for a job.

Mark