God rays effect

[stezza]

I have been asked to create this effect for a product using god rays effect.
Currently struggling to get anything similar so any pointers would be great!! Which light would be best with envi fog?
Cheers

[damaggio]

I would start with an area light behind enable the directional cone and env fog and boost the rendered fog rays in post, the god rays are not very strong in vray 5. Exclude the other lights for the headset to not interact with the fig.
I used 6 cubes behind the headset rendering invisible but cast shadows for the faked god rays.
That image however is mostly an illustration so to do this in 3D involves a lot of cheating and compositing.

[damaggio]

sample scene.....

[stezza]

hey there, thanks for the scene, I did something similar to start with. I had a MASH of balls in a sphere distribution so I could animate them with a signal node. I was trying to be clever but didn't give the result. I used your ramp backplate - that was a good call.
I ended up with envifog and a fan of 10 spotlights with differing intensities and cone angles, mixed with penumbra angles these could then be animated and adjusted individually.


Now the tweeking begins.....

[damaggio]

Great solution stezza, the individual spotlights certainly give you more control, i like that your god rays are much sharper. Good luck and post a final render later.