I was just wondering what some of the best methods everyone has found for making visible light rays in bryce 5.

I love visible rays. You go with volumetric light, selecting "Visible object" and then "Volume" in the LightLab. You have to be careful about the quality/speed settings, 'cuz volumetrics tend to skyrocket your rendertimes. They're wonderful on spotlights. If you got too much frustrated by the long renders, you can always try to make them in postwork. S.

Attached Link: http://www.3dtotal.com/team/Tutorials/sunrays/sunrays_p1.asp

Or you can do it like how Rochr does his...check out this link...very good tutorial.

MD

Attached Link: Light Rays

Carefully, lol. I swear I have struggled with light rays so much in the beginnning, but now they are letting me believe I have control over them...for now. I had given out a Bryce scene file that was a specific set-up; volumetric light rays, streaming out from behind an object, with a plain black background. You can get it at the link. AgentSmith

You might want to check out these tutorials as well;

http://www.petersharpe.com/Tutorial12.htm

http://www.petersharpe.com/Tutorial26.htm

http://www.unc.edu/~haraszti/volumetrictut.html

If you can you should try making them in postwork, that way it works fast and flexible. If you need accurate and complex shadows you should just use bryce the way DC, AS, Petersharpe and many others do. But always be carefull. Volume lights are processing intensive and hard to tweak to perfection.

Amen, brother.

In fact I'm trying my hand in making lightrays in postwork. The thing that annoys me most in Bryce is the difficult interaction when you have more than one volumetric spotlight in a scene. It's really a pain trying to avoid the artifacts.

Attached Link: http://members.xoom.virgilio.it/Perry/luce/main.html

Well, don't laugh at the scene set-up, I was just trying out my net. But, I thought the scene would be a good candidate for trying to do some fake light rays in post-work. It's going to take some time and experimenting, but this was done by a freeware plugin. I had to play with the settings a lot, and there is a few other factors, but, for what little it does, it can do quite well. The plugin is hard to control, and I'm not sure what steps would be best to take to get the best result, I'll have to play with this a lot to get any kind of step by step down. It's called "Luce", and it can be found at the link. AgentSmith

The link doesn't seem to work correctly...

Hmm, comes up for me, didn't I see that you were having problems with other sites, and with uploading your pics to Renderosity? AS

yeah, this comp here is acting really strange. yesterday it was constantly using the HD at 100% slowing down the system. and today I have had 6 blue screens in 30 minutes. I don't know what is wrong excacly yet.

Could you e-mail me the plug-in?

sure thing, let me go find your e-mail. AS

thanx.

Attached Link: Luce for Photoshop

What the heck am I talking about? Here is the direct link to download luce! Jeez...lol. AS Also, if anyone is interested he makes a version of luce for Adobe Premiere. Link for Premiere here; http://members.xoom.virgilio.it/Perry/luce/luce.prm

thanx. The link works.