Author Topic: Volumetric / Projection / Disco / Laser Lights  (Read 20453 times)

2017-05-05, 00:37:12

gunarchi

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Hi there,

i have been searching for , how to do volumetric lights in corona , i am not talking about volumetric fog i am about , like stage lights, moving light beams with gobos or projection light. I searched alot but i cant find a solution for this.
basically i am an event visualizer so in my field i always have to show lots of light with gobos and volumes and colors , that take huge time to render on other engines , i know corona is much faster and its getting faster and faster by the time , but i still cant find a solution for my problem.
please help me out.

references are attached.

thanks.

2017-05-05, 14:16:35
Reply #1

TomG

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Should be the same as any other volumetrics - the main change that would be required is using directionality or IES in a Corona Light to give it the focused beam of the lights in question. After that, tweaking the volumetric material would be the same as any other situation, most likely a set up with a minimum of absorption and a maximum of scattering would be best.

Really there are no such thing as volumetric lights in the real world, it is always the medium the light is passing through that is volumetric :)

Screenshot attached of a very quick set up, here I used a cube with CoronaVolumeMtl, two Corona lights of different colors with one of the IES files included with 1.6. You could use a global volumetric material too. If you use a cube or other object for the volume, the camera would have to be outside of that volume object for the effect to render.

Hope this helps!
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2017-05-05, 14:33:24
Reply #2

TomG

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As a thought, for gobos, could set up a situation that is like the real world, and have an actual object with the texture for the light to pass through. Or could use a CoronaLight Material on an object with Directionality, and use a texture and / or opacity map on that.

The greater the directionality, the more noise there will be though, something to keep in mind.

One last option I could think of would be to create the desired volume as an object (e.g. the cone of light) and use Emission to give it some glow, as a fake. In some cases this could prove less noisy than using a light source with a super-high directionality, but as far as I know it wouldn't allow the gobo type effects in the lighting.

Tom Grimes | chaos-corona.com
Product Manager | contact us

2017-05-05, 15:17:46
Reply #3

pokoy

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One thing you should be aware of is that in order to get noise free images it will take a while to render. I've produced some images with volumetric spotlights last year and some of them rendered for a week to be (close to) noise-free. They were pretty high res though, 6K+. Depending on what you need - photorealistic or illustrative image - you may get away with Scanline and volumetic lights.

2017-05-05, 15:26:27
Reply #4

Ludvik Koutny

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Some ideas:

- Instead of rendering a week to get them noise free, simply utilize denoiser

- You can try to use native 3dsMax lights (spotlights) with CoronaShadows, they should render very quickly with little to no noise

- Always use single bounce only volume to get reasonable performance.

2017-05-05, 23:38:14
Reply #5

gunarchi

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thank you everyone for helping me out, specially @TomG i really really thank you from bottom of my heart u really solved the biggest problem of my life, i could not imagine how easy this was, .

i'll be back with some other problems .;)

2017-05-08, 10:35:58
Reply #6

eaglerulez

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I too am an event visualizer and was just about to post a thread asking about this.

Does anyone have any tips for controlling the range of the volumetrics a little better?

What I run into often is that I get a ray of light, but the fall off just doesn't feel natural.

Any thoughts?

2017-05-08, 15:58:55
Reply #7

johan belmans

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David Baker from Maxplugins.com did in 2013 a presentation at the End User Event (Utrecht- The Netherlands). He (and someone else how I do not remember) made an animation for a pitch for a big event. If I remember well they used cones with a light material and fall off to represent spotlights. Maybe this can be of any use.

2017-05-08, 21:24:53
Reply #8

Ondra

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belly: yep, that would work - I remember people doing exactly this in Corona Alpha to trick people into believing corona had volumetrics back then ;)
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2017-05-08, 21:30:27
Reply #9

romullus

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Some chaps even utilized motion blur to fake volumetrics back in the days o_O
I'm not Corona Team member. Everything i say, is my personal opinion only.
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2017-05-09, 01:47:18
Reply #10

sebastian___

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Maybe a little offtopic, but does anyone know how to get "fake" but good looking volumetrics and light rays  in 3ds max ?
I like to place small clouds of mist and manually placed light rays in the scene.
The problem with cards (planes) is they don't interact well with 3d objects.
I uploaded these clips made in cryengine 2 where I used fake volumetrics but some how it looks "round" and with some shading on them. In movie you'll see I even managed to build clouds with dynamics in them.

All these were possible in 2007, I hope there is a way for that today too.
I'm not looking for real time rendering like in cryengine, but it should render at least somewhat similar to how a regular object renders.
I could export clouds and mist with alpha channel from cryengine, but I would prefer to build them as 3d objects in 3ds max.
Does Corona renders slower lots of planes with transparency, like smoke ?


2017-05-10, 04:40:54
Reply #11

eaglerulez

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belly: yep, that would work - I remember people doing exactly this in Corona Alpha to trick people into believing corona had volumetrics back then ;)

Could you guys by any chance elaborate on how exactly you accomplished this effect? I tried some cones with a light material and some fall off maps applied and the results weren't what I was hoping for, but I might have approached things incorrectly.

Thanks so much!

2017-05-10, 11:06:42
Reply #12

romullus

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Here's quick test. It still uses volumetric mterial, but instead of applying it to big cube surrounding whole scene, i opted for actual geometry cones. That way you can control effect in very precise manner. This method has some downsides, like cones dropping shaddows, but with some fiddling with light intensity and absorbtion distance, you can minimize its visibility. It renders considerably faster than it would with whole scene volumetrics and you can turn off single bounce only without much time penalty.
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2017-05-10, 11:14:25
Reply #13

johan belmans

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Seems Romullus did the job already.
Anyway, here my attempt

edit: attached MAX 2015 file format
« Last Edit: 2017-05-15, 09:57:00 by belly »

2017-05-11, 01:24:03
Reply #14

Noah45

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Thank you Romulus and Belly. How would you solve the Gobo scenario?
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