Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?ForumID=107&Form.ShowMessage=1472109

I've ran into this before, but in light of Teri's previous thread, I figured I'd toss this out at the lighting masters (read : anyone who likes to click a lot in the Light Lab!) My problem is this : Sometimes when I build a scene, all goes well, until I try to use a volumetric light. Then... Nothing. No volumes. No dusty light, just the same look that one would get from a regular linear spotlight. Teri's thread shows my scene, I just didn't want to bog that thread down with more of my idiocy. I wanted to show volumetric light coming off of a street-lamp type prop. The setup went fine, the scene is no different from a million other scenes. But when I tried to set up some volume lights, I got nothing but the effect of a linear, stock, regular non-visible spotlight? When I saved off the objects and re-inserted them into a blank scene, one in which i had already set up ONE true volume spotlight, everything went fine. Has anyone else had this problem? Anyeon know WHY or HOW to get around it, short of re-creating the entire scene? What am I doing wrong? The link goes to Teri's thread, this pic is the last one I rendered before trying to shift into volumetrics...

Oops. I posted a reply into Teri's thread. Basically offering the idea to use objects set to fuzzy and additive (with some transparency adjustments) to simulate volumetrics. There's an example image in my "teri's thread" post. Perhaps this could help. Have fun.

Another mystery to me is using a volumetric light with a 2d plane. No matter how I set the transparency (or other settings) of the 2d plane, the whole 2d plane square is visible. It's similar to Teri's problem in appearance, except if you set the light to non-volumentric, it works just fine. You seen this before?

If I understand correctly, after turning on Volume Visible Light in the Light Editor go to the Material Editor and in the Material Options popup change the Light Sensitive option to Basic Shading. Set the Edge Softness to about 100 and set the Density around 5. The light on the right in the image shows the above setup. HTH; Dan

Thanks Dan, I'll give that a try, see if it helps. Mathematically, it seems much more correct than having the light as "Light Sensitive". Thanks for posting!

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/viewed.ez?galleryid=481292

SDL, try also setting the light to infinite, this extends the visible portion of the light beyond the actual object. A second issue is to increase the light quality in the materials editor or you may end up with artifacts in your light rays. Try to keep it under 65% though as thsdi really nails you in the rendertime. One issue to watch for is the tendency in bryce for light leakage with volume visible. This can be an issue with a larger light shining throug a smaller openning. A forth consideration is to have the light rays against (visually) a dark background. The attached link is my "A place in the sun" image.

Aye, Incarnadine, I love that scene! THe setup is beautiful, and of course the lighting is damn near perfect, if not perfect already! Still, I haven't been able to work around this bug. It seems like Bryce chooses when volumetrics will work, although I know it has no built in AI....

As a suggestion for approach to your scene above, diasble the sunlight to start. Go to the lightlab for your two lamp source lights and set infinite on, then volumetric visible. Render your scene with only these and let us know how it looks. Two other concerns, your visual background for the rays is too light (dark is the key) and you need something to occlude the light and proiduce the shadows that define the rays properly. Let us know what happens.

OH! try to avoid spherical lights, it can be made to work but is a real pain, directional are better!

(nods to Incarnadine) Aye, there is no sunlight, and the volumes are spots, but your tip about occlusion is good too. What I'm getting at is that, in this project/scene file, NO volumetrics are working. At all. It doesn't matter where I put them, but they will not work in this scene no matter what I do. Thus, the "bug" part of it. I saved off the lamp and loaded it into it's own, empty scene. And boom, the volumetrics worked! But it still doesn't fix my bug...

I think you are rendering against a too light visually background in this scene. What happens if you replace the wall texture with a very low ambience dark grey (say 20%diffusion max)?

Aye, it's not that, my friend, though I understand why you might think that. If I point the camera away from the scene, so that all you see is blackness, and create a volumetric setup,you STILL cannot create any volumetrics. I could send you the file, but take my word for it. It sucks, but alas, it was all just a test... I think that it might have something to do with Bryce 4 files being converted to .br5's, more than anything else...? More news at Eleven!

Aye, but I did it anyway! Thanks for your tips, Incarnadine! I ended up increasing the size of the entire scene by 400%, and using the "flat shading" technique you referred to as well! Not quite perfect, yet, but it's getting there! Thanks so much, I almost had to change my name to "Shadow-Dragon-Rookie"!!!

One last trip into the lighting and/or materials lab to make sure you have cast shadows set for the lights. It is looking like it is starting to work though. BTW you're more than welcome. (SDR - LOL!!)