Quote - > Quote - If you have any issues with the Reality fog, let me know... I've spent a bit of time with that one! `¬) (certainly with the image above, it may not give the results you expect!)

Have always admired your renders mbin, and your The Secret Place render is spectacular! Actually have a scene set up on stand by, which I was hoping to get a similar fog effect as you have in The Secret Place, but inside of a large hall. The hall has stained glass windows, which are actually just planes with textures of a stained glass window on them. One question I have off the top of my head, would the windows work as light if I set them to light with textures in Reality? That alone, I realize is not enough light, but if I left one wall open behind the camera and added a sun, would that reflect enough light for the fog prop to give the desired affect? Any advise you give would be much appreciated!

Thank you for the complement! That was the result of my first attempts to understand the fog prop and took several weeks before I 'got' it! http://fav.me/d3i4weh

I wouldn't leave a wall open and use a sun, the fog is a very 'excitable' prop, and you will almost certainly get a 'white out'. With using the fog prop you need to consider that it will 'fog' were ever a beam of light is, if your light source produces multi directional light, then the fog will just appear as a big white cube. Also not sure about setting the planes to be the light source, as you will need to create the tight beams.

A simple test would be to load your fog prop and then insert a spotlight. narrow the beam of the spotlight to be 5-10degrees and point it into the fog. Render to see the result. If you then widen the angle of the spot, you can parent a plane to be in front and apply an alpha map. this is much better than having multiple spots, as the light will be broken up into beams. I have a complete series of tutorials in my scrapbook at Deviant art, (as well as in the tuts section of the Reality plug in group) The above is illustrated here http://fav.me/d4jvkiw (if you have not seen this before, following the links will give you the alpha map used and further ways of using the fog prop)

In relation to your question on stained glass, I have wanted to do a 'final render' in the manner that you indicate, but several other people have mentioned wanting to do the same and I have not had the chance to do a proper scene. However I did demonstrate how this could be done, and it also refers to Paolo's original tut on using the fog prop. It will give you the effect that you arre looking for I think? The problem that you may have is getting enough illumination if you do not want to have only the rays visible, as the more the light bounces around, the more the scene will have a tendancy to white out again. I had considered doing a two layer render, with one layer without the fog prop, and the other layer with the fog prop, leaving all other lighting the same. This should allow the two layers to be blended to get the effect you want. The only issue may be that as the light scource needs to be quite small for using with the fog prop, it may lead to harsh shadows. It would be worth trying it though.

To get the result you want with your stained glass, then here is the link to the post, which contains the description as well as a link in the comments to Paolo's fog tutorial. http://fav.me/d4xnsra

I have included the image below... and I look forward to seeing your results! `¬)

 

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