God rays for simple pan

[Crayox13]

Hi,
I'm gonna do a simple pan over this area. I put a plane above with noise to generate "cloud" shadows and as you can see it's pretty aggressive in blocking the rays and letting them through. After playing with all the settings I just can't get those strong rays as I would like. I'm using vrayenvironmentfog.
Can this be achieved like this?
Thx

[fixeighted]

Try this https://www.dropbox.com/s/wsw9k3hatq...DRAYS.max?dl=0
Both methods, noise plane and some extra geometry, so you can try separately/both and see which is better

[Crayox13]

Thanks so much for this but can you save it for MAX 21? Also any ideas why my method isn't working?

[fixeighted]

Here you go https://www.dropbox.com/s/nmcfmu5a62...DRAYS.max?dl=0

Hard to say why yours doesn't work as well withou seeing the file. Have a look at what I did and see where the differences lie. It's a pretty simple setup so may be just one small thing.

[Crayox13]

Cool, I see you used Boxgizmo, I didn't so everything kinda blended. It's better now but only when viewed sideways. When I look from top I still don't get nice rays...only if I make the fog thicker but then I don't see my land nicely. I know it makes sense phisically but what I need is mostly clean air with strong sun rays...it's as if that can't be achieved.

[fixeighted]

What you can try is to create a load of long tapered cylinders and use those as gizmos, so effectively you get cones of fog.
It's pretty hacky but might be ok for what you need.

EDIT: ends up something like this...

[Crayox13]

) Thanks for the suggestion. If there won't be an other way, maybe.

[fixeighted]

As I already did it here is the gizmo...I actually rather like the result when I adjust it a bit more https://www.dropbox.com/s/nmcfmu5a62...DRAYS.max?dl=0

[Joelaff]

I still use old school spot lights with 3ds Max Volume Light for this. They render almost instantly, and you seem to get way more control.

Normally we render these in a pass and adjust in comp.

[squintnic]

I was about to say you need to render seperately on black when using vray env fog as it messes up too much of the lightign and general look. i know thats how its meant to work but can be a pain for controlling the look quickly.
I often set up a new scene xref with just a plain black override and render that seperately to use in comp. much quicker, more flexible (fog and light levels often highy commented on by clients)

more flexible artist centric fog controls and falloff in vray would be really handy.