Helicopter flood light - night sun

[Adam H. Stewart]

I am finishing up an animation that has a helicopter flying around a bunch of large buildings. Most of the work for the helicopter was done by another max animator he used the cyclinder with fall-off worked out nicely in the final comp.

Now the shot I am working on involves real interaction between the spotlight and geometry- i.e. shadows - beam gets stopped by buildings. I have done experiments using volume lights in max and volume lights in final render - both are pretty bad. I get nice results with ies files but am finding it very hard to control the intesity, breath and width of the beam - does anybody have suggestions ?

I seem to go through this about once a year volume lights and glows, I wish there was a magic bullet out there - has anybody used ProOptic Suite ? does that work with Vray ?

Any help you can give will be most appreciated.

Thanks as always.

[Da_elf]

http://www.elfpro3d.com/Vray/volume.jpg this one i used max volumetric lights with vray.

[Adam H. Stewart]

Sweet

Nice image - maybe I'm going about it the wrong way - I was trying to use the falloff from the spot to create the varying intensity at the edge of the beam - looking at you're example ( did you use a Vray light ? ) it seems it would work better with a light behind an object that restricts it into a round shape - allowing the beam to naturally fan - hard to explain - I'll give that a shot.

Thanks again and sweet work.

[ShaunDon]

Damn, Elf... I've struggled with getting volumetric lighting to work right in VRay many times. Now I know the secret is a bare naked lady in heels! Thanks buddy!

Shaun

[Da_elf]

hehe. actually its an image with 2 normal lights. 1 which controls the volumetric lights using a shadow map shadow and the light is set to not affect diffuse. the 2nd light is whats lighting the girl and ground and its using a vray shadow. the back of the girl is lit by the volumetric light which encases her. actually the entire room is mainly lit by the volumetric light and whats comming through the thin windows. basically the slivers of light on the ground are too small to light the room with bounced light.

[Adam H. Stewart]

Volume light test

Here is a test using max Volume light with Vray. Looking pretty good so far !!

http://h1.ripway.com/Adam_Stewart/Fo...1H_vL_07_2.mov


thanks for the help.

[jacksc02]

wheres the volume light?

[DaForce]

what he said ^

[Adam H. Stewart]

Opps

Opps sorry - uploaded the wrong bloody movie - I was so intent on getting out of work early for the 4th I uploaded the wrong bloody thing I have repaired the link : this is the one I should have used :

http://h1.ripway.com/Adam_Stewart/Fo...1H_vL_07_2.mov

Sorry.

[DaForce]

ahhh.. I have seen the light

Looks pretty good.

[jacksc02]

much better!
add a slight noise to the volume light and it will look a little more realistic