OK, I want to make a laser beam. The trick is I would like it to be able to reflect off and/or through things. I have made a fake laser by stretching a cylinder and applying variations of glow, transparency and anything glows to it so that it looks acceptable. I would like however to find a way of projecting a parallel light beam in Carrara (like a laser) that could then interact with objects it hits. Does anyone have any suggestions? (or better yet, an answer). Thanks, Andrew

Animated GIF

Hi Andrew, Hope the screen capture and GIF help out. I think they probably do a better job of explaining than I do. The Laser is obviously a spline object that has been changed over time. Every "bounce" requires two anchor points that play "catch up" as the beam reflects from the objects. One point stays, they other moves forward and then the corner point, over one frame, catches up to and replaces the leading point so it can move forward again. It's pretty fun. Good luck. Mark Bremmer www.MarkBremmer.com

Whoops, here's the screen capture...

Hi ppowellaa, Mark's technique works well, but i got another way to do this ... Might work on not, depending on your needs . Maybe you can just fake the effect ? For example, if the laser bounces on a wall, you can make two lasers objects . One laser is behind the wall and appears when the other one hits the wall and disappears in it, giving the illusion the laser bounces on the wall . I've made a test and i've find that it was uneasy to set up : the two lasers got to be perfectly placed and synchronized . Or maybe i just suck on animations ;P . Anyway, if you want, i can send you my test file by e-mail, it can give you some ideas . litst

Thanks for all the input! What I am looking at is the ability to recreate the actual light so that it is visible when it passes through fog/mist and invisible in air and can be reflected off a mirrored surface. I have success doing this with tubes but wanted to see if it could be done with a "Real" light. I found a tutorial for max, but I can not get the angle less than one so my "Real" light always expands. I also have been unable to reflect the light off an object- I can see reflections of the light in the target if it is a mirrored surface, but if I bounce the light off a mirror onto a flat object it is not visible. This optics challenge is very thought provoking! Would it be possible to create an extension for a parallel light?

I'm just a dumb n00b so I dont think I'll help much but I think you are not looking for a spline-object remake but an actual light object that bounces off reflective surfaces and is visible due to particles in the air. I think there is a tube-light plug-in from Digitical Carvers Guild that might just do the trick though I'm not sure cuz I've never used it :p. Anyways, good luck.

The laser will never actually bounce off a mirror in the carrara ray tracer. A ray tracer has to support caustics and backwards ray tracing in order to make that work. I know the effect seems trivial, but it is actually very costly to implement. So you'll probably have to fake it. A good way to do so would be to simply place another light at the reflection point and do it manually. Brian Retford Carrara Extensions www.losthorizonsoftware.com