Is there any easy way to get volumetric lighting?

[Xntric]

Hey guys!

I have been struggling to make volumetric light come out of the tower. I have messed around with environment fog and added gizmos and lights with high directionality, but it never looks quite right and it's awfully slow to render.
the environment fog also seems to be conflicting aerialperspective effect.

Am i doing something wrong?

would be cool if we could get some hacky pr. light volumetric option or something.

Feel free to give critique to the other aspects of the image as well.

Thanks

[fixeighted]

Image looks great - good atmosphere.
Volumetrics really need a darker background for them to contrast against...so they are probably there, just fighting to be seen
I did just test this to make sure and they do work in the right conditions. Whilst the lighting etc. is different they definitely come through.

[squintnic]

you need to use atmos gizmos and only have them affected by one light.
its a bit of a pain and atmosphere stuff is very slow in vray but its the only way i have found to have 'creative control' of fog and volumetrics. you ma have some issues with falloff from the gizmo edges to best to render on black and adjust in post for brst results and mess around with the falloff values.

[matanov]

you need to use atmos gizmos and only have them affected by one light.
its a bit of a pain and atmosphere stuff is very slow in vray but its the only way i have found to have 'creative control' of fog and volumetrics. you ma have some issues with falloff from the gizmo edges to best to render on black and adjust in post for brst results and mess around with the falloff values.

If you have some comparisons where the same situation is faster somewhere else, please share them. I'm very curious to see a 1:1 comparison of where such a setup with mixed volumes and multiple scattering is much quicker.

[fixeighted]

I didn't find it slow at all in the example I made. I only let it render for a couple of minutes and it does what it is supposed to do I think.
Looking again this morning at Xntric's example it doesn't look like there is a light per window, which may be why they aren't so strong - but if there were then it should work just fine.
I'd love to play with the scene if it's available - even without the geometry, so just cam, lights, gizmos etc, - I can rebuild the rest to see what time I can achieve

[Joelaff]

So often it is helpful to just have old school volumetric lights without the overall image change from an environment fog, and without the crazy slow render times.

Still end up using Max volumetric lights for that a lot (yuck). Typically this type of thing gets rendered in a pass and comped anyway.

[squintnic]

If you have some comparisons where the same situation is faster somewhere else, please share them. I'm very curious to see a 1:1 comparison of where such a setup with mixed volumes and multiple scattering is much quicker.

sorry missed this.
its more about control and a good way to not have the whole scene blanketed in slow fog, when you can easily comp in a ok haze depth with z or wpp passes. vray certainly not artitst friendly when it comes to volume lights, weird abstract settings.

i also sometimes do what joe does if i need a super fast volume through a tree with leaves or something.

depends a lot on the kind of work and complexity of the scene and how much post is happening of course.