Any idea about some good tutorial to achive with Vue 4 a light effect like the one in the attached image, realized by the artist G_Mckenna with Lightwave? I want to do somthing similar, putting some 3d letters at the angel's place.

Have you tried the volumetric spotlights? It's not an easy thing to do, but it's just a matter of setting it up right so the shadows can create the shape you want.

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Yes, like Mike said. Don't use a volumetric atmosphere, but set a spotlight to volumetric, and it should do what you want. Check out this previous thread about Smallspace making a "gigashadow". :)

Thanks... I was trying using volumetric spotlight BUT in volumetric atmosphere. Now I will try tu turn off this last one.

I played around with it a little this morning, and since you mentioned text, I figured I would try that. It's a volumetric spotlight in a volumetric atmosphere. The settings for this, in the volumetric settings box, Intesnsity .5 Quality boost 6.0 I had the "show smoke and dust" option turned off. The shadow value was set to 500%. which definitely does make a digfference, and the Power of the spot itself was 200. I had to add some non shadow-casting lights around it so you could see the text, because all that light behind it would wash it out, but the lights in front don't seem to have afffected the volumetric shadowing at all. Rendered on final in about 5 minutes. I'm surprised really, because it looks more like an Ultra render. The "quality" setting in the volumetric options box does make a huge difference.

Wow... Mike... this is simple and impressive. I played a lot with light beams but I never got them that good. I will have to check the quality setting next time.

Nice work on that, Mike! :)

Great Mike: you made a winderfull job! Maybe can you post the file (if not too big) in the freestuff area? I'm really interested to see how far each pther you placed your lights, etc. etc. Thnak you! ***Luca

Well thanks everyone. :) Luca, I didn't save the scene file, but it would probably be easy enough for me to recreate. In any event, the volume spot was behind the text and above it. you can see where it was in the picture, and it was only about as far away from the text as the text object is in width. Then, right slightly below the spotlight was a directional light with shadows turned off, and the lens flare was set to show random streaks with all the sliders up all the way. The color shift was on red, which is where the slight orange next to the E came from. I had the star filter on too, but the spotlight buried it. Then there was a point light with a power of about 300 right below the text and not very far from it. It had no lens flare, no shadows, and was just a non-volume white light, there only to counteract the washout effect of the volume spot so close behind the text. The atmosphere was a volumetric one. No clouds at all, though. I had a dul blue-gray fog type set, and I just turned the fog up just enough to where the background wasn't black. Rendered it at 75 degrees panoramic, at whatever size it is, and that was it. :) Simple, eh? if you need more help with what you want to do, Luca, let me know.