Test your vray skillz

[timmatron]

I just watched The Day the Earth Stood Still, and I really liked this one scene where there is light shining through leaf-less trees with fog. And I thought it be a great exercise to try with Vray fog. However, so far I haven't really done that great so far. I was wondering if anybody has better ideas how to reproduce something like this.

In my scene I have a vray sphere light, and a few different types of fog, though I'm still trying to get the hang of the settings. One sphere gizmo around the light for one of the fogs, and the other 2 have no gizmos. I haven't played around with colors or textures yet - I just wanted the basic look for starters.

How would you get those volumetric rays that you see in this movie grab? I'm really way off, but I don't think it could be that complex to set up.

[percydaman]

your going to need to put a map into the density slot I think.

[timmatron]

Well for starters, I'm retarded. I had GI override set to white, so I was fighting against that and not even realizing it, DUH.

I'll keep playing around and see what I get. Percy, you wanna take a crack at it too? I can email it to you.

[jacksc02]

im up for a challenge too!

PM me

[timmatron]

Ok, here's the scene for anybody who wants to try it out. I took out all the atmospheric effects so you can start from scratch. I did leave the light and gizmo that I was using. You'll need Onyx Treestorm - I didn't want to get in any trouble by sharing a mesh from Onyx.

Max 2009 format. And here was the last version of my fog. See what you can do with it.

[percydaman]

Can't seem to get the effect using vray fog in your scene. Though can get it to work in a simple scene. Not a problem in After Effects as post of course. Attached is a zip file with adjusted scenes. First image is using standard volume light. Second is simple test using vrayfog and third is after effects post.

http://rapidshare.com/files/241225584/vray_fog_test.zip

[Da_elf]

ive never had luck with volumetric lights with vray fog

[devin]

Does the fog interact with geometric objects, if it doesn't then I don't see how you can create this effect with Vray fog.

[percydaman]

yes it does. If you go up a few posts and look at my image in the middle, its interacting with the geometry that spells out 'vray'

[devin]

Percy, there's no doubt that your Vray text is interacting with the fog but in the other test file you used a volume light instead of fog. In that case the fog doesn't seem to interact with the trees, any idea why?

[percydaman]

good question. I don't have a proper answer. Its just to difficult to push the effect far enough to get that interaction without blowing the entire thing out. *shrug

[Chris-C]

Hey all. Heres my attempt:

[timmatron]

Very nice! Care to share some settings?

[Chris-C]

Very nice! Care to share some settings?

Thanks. Heres the scene file: http://rapidshare.com/files/243464405/Shadow_land.zip

This was actually the only way i was able to reproduce this effect, not the way it was supposed to be rly^^ I think it should be possible to do with a vraysun, havent tested it yet doh

[timmatron]

Ahh, I see...same light origin, different targets. Very clever! Thanks for posting the file. Got to work on my technique some more...