Epic Props: GodRays
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Epic Props: GodRays
AlienRenders
Posts: 794
Anyone try this out yet? I think iRay can now do godrays with the water volume trick without needing to have the camera outside the volume now. But it's still a pain to set up. If this product works well, I want to buy it, but I'd like to hear how well it works from people who have tried it.
Post edited by AlienRenders on
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There are some end user examples in this thread: http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/89366/epic-props-godrays-volumetric-light-for-iray-coming-soon/p1
I've got this and I have to say, it's pretty ingenious. I've never been successful with the water volume trick, either. So I'm loving this Godrays product. It works with a prop attached to a spotlight. You can view the scene though the spotlight to point it where you want, or use the "Point At" option. There are a lot of presets and additional options to make it easy to find the look you want: color, density, lens flares, etc. And once you become familiar with how it works, you can fine tune it even more in the surfaces editor, if you want.
Here's an image I did using this product:
I spent more time trying to get the eye of the dog to not appear to be a black hole than I did setting up the light prop. (You might have to look at the larger image to see the eye is brown...) Anyway, I'm very pleased with this GodRay product.
Looks amazing! I love this image.
I can use the water volume trick fine (if you mean fog SSS). The problem is that it's a (swears elided) to set up, it often doesn't work well except at certain angles, often requires multiple renders to composite well, and takes forever to render.
This product? Works fast, and great. It uses old style 'tricks,' but it does them VERY WELL. And what really matters, in the end, is whether it looks good. And it does.
Gets a Will thumbs up.
My only question is how does it affect render times? I've only done "godrays" once and I let the image run for 48 hrs and it only got to about 5%. Of course I have a crappy laptop, but still.
It is very very very fast.
The thing is, it doesn't use subsurface scattering or volume calculations at all. It's 'just' cleverly arranged planes with opacity maps. Which works way better than it sounds, AND is very very fast.
Well that's good to know. Thanks. :)
Thank you.
5 hours on a 980ti.
Worth the wait for the effects, but yeh it sucks resources; but rendering is a resource-intensive hobby.
Turning the prop off was less than five minutes, and might have been a minute or three less, but can't remember.
Does this work well for godways in forest scenes?
Thanks for the feedback. Into the cart it goes.
That answered what I needed to know, as I own a similar product, which I haven't had much use for, it's a pass for me.
Does anyone know by the way if it's possible to create calculated volumetrics in iray?
mtl1: Here's a forest (well, fern lake) render:
I love this product!
Thanks :) Any renders right beside the trees? I'm wondering if the tree geometry will block/scatter the light properly...
I'll try to set up a scene where it's going right through a tree. Though for sanity's sake I think I'll just grab a single tree to do that.
Ok, here's an attempt.
Note that, again, this isn't a calculated volume effect. It doesn't catch every single leaf. But what's interesting is that you can get different effects if you test out rotating the column in various ways... the rays 'catch' different parts of the geometry. This unevenness can be a huge feature, rather than a bug -- with a volume effect it tends to go EVERYWHERE, even if you don't want it to, and it's hard to fight just 'EVERYTHING LOOKS LIKE MILK.'
This took about 10, 15 mins to render. I could have cooked it longer, but good enough to demonstrate it.
What I'm excited about is that you could use this for energy blasts, ship drives, campfires, all sorts of stuff.
Well, I'm pleased!
Just Cyclone (converted to Iray and some stuff tweaked to add Metallicity), epic godrays rendered on transparency and a starfield composited in underneath. No postwork other than the added starfield.
That looks very cool, Will. So, rendered on a transparency? A little more details please!
Oh, nothing fancy. I just did 'dome and scene,' set Dome and ground to 'off'
So the backdrop is transparent and you can easily layer something in photoshop or whatever. If you have a lot of reflections it MIGHT get dodgy, but works fine for what I had.
I was a little worried that the edges of the godrays would be too obvious, but the only noticeable effect are some striations due to the intersecting planes. (you can see brighter lines radiating out)
But, given what it is... it actually looks 'right' for exhaust, so yay!
Oh, for reference, I ended up using 'dispersion' with no dust.
Thanks for explaining, Will. I might have to give this a try!