Hey folks!

Is there a way to create a line segment of light in Poser? What I mean is something like this:

http://cdn2.bigcommerce.com/n-zfvgw8/9d8rejkg/product_images/uploaded_images/red-laser-line-on-wall-high-res-.jpg?t=1411584341

I'm wanting to create a sci-fi "scanning" device where a red light line passes over a person's body. Thanks!

Preview, SuperFly or FireFly? When asking special effects questions, please always state which renderer you intend to use because they're different.

My apologies. I forgot that the Superfly renderer was a thing. I don't have that version of Poser. Let's go with the Firefly renderer.

I recently created glowing headlights & tail-lights for an exterior-night shot of a jeep by using primitives and monkeying in the materials room to make them glow.

You might try using a cylinder primitive--reducing & elongating it--then positioning it accordingly.

I'm no materials room expert, but I remembered a trick Richard Schrand described in the appendix of his book POSER 4 PROPACK which he called "The Ricks Effect" (page 364).

Even though Poser 4 had an older render engine, I used a variation of the technique in Poser Pro 2012 Firefly and it worked.

This freebie has a UV-mapped "beam" and I think it had a "scatter" disc at the end. Can't remember now; it was a quicky made for a forum request several years ago. Maybe it will save BB time to use as a starting mesh?

SFX beam

In FireFly you can use a shader to manipulate the pattern of light created from a spot light.

There are many ways to do this. Probably the simplest is to just draw the shape you want in an image using white on black, then attach the image to the material of the light itself. Choose what color the light projects in the shader, not the image.

Another way is to use math. Here's a shader that mixes U and V coordinates and then creates a strip of light. The angle of the strip is adjustable by changing the Blender Blending value.

I used a spotlight with angle start and angle end set to 8 degrees. You can adjust the size and falloff from center using those values.

I placed a cylinder where the spotlight is to help you visualize what's happening in this render.

If you want to also see the air glowing, the Atmosphere feature might work but you'd have to use a very small step size and this is likely to be very slow. You'd probably do better with a prop as others suggested.

I created the Laser fire in these images by creating 2 cylinder primitives, parenting them one inside the other, and then playing with the ambient and transparency values to get a "glowing" effect... You could also turn the cylinders into emissive surfaces if you wanted and then it's just adjusting the scale and length to get the desired effect...

That was a brilliant little tutorial, bagginsbill! It worked perfectly! Thank you!