Atmoshperic Effects Volume Camera Problems

computergeek66_4a760078e4

Hello All! I purchased Age of Armor's Atmospheric Effects last night and I am having trouble getting the intended effect out of them. I would like to achieve the effect of shadows filtering through the fog in the first screenshot of the product (here's a link) (basically it is a dark godray caused by a shadow).

My render is an attachment on this post (I'm not sure how to get it into the body of this post, sorry). Basically, I would like these dark godrays to filter down from the character in my scene. The scene has a man with a plane in the background and a plane as the floor. The light is placed in front of the land, angled down to shine on him from the top, and the camera is placed behind the man.

My current camera settings are:
Volume Density: .0013
Light Density: .010
Turbulence Frequency: .025
Turbulence Variance: 4.1%
Distance Start: 0
Distance End: 40.98

and the Volume Color is straight black (0,0,0)

My question is, what do I need to edit to get these rays to be darker? I can see them, but they are rather faint. I have been playing with my settings for awhile now, but I figured someone probably knows how to use this tool much better than I do.

My light is a red spotlight with an intensity of 190ish%

I hope someone can help me out here.

Thanks in advance!

Rareth

baquwa said:

Hello All! I purchased Age of Armor's Atmospheric Effects last night and I am having trouble getting the intended effect out of them. I would like to achieve the effect of shadows filtering through the fog in the first screenshot of the product (here's a link) (basically it is a dark godray caused by a shadow).

My render is an attachment on this post (I'm not sure how to get it into the body of this post, sorry). Basically, I would like these dark godrays to filter down from the character in my scene. The scene has a man with a plane in the background and a plane as the floor. The light is placed in front of the land, angled down to shine on him from the top, and the camera is placed behind the man.

My current camera settings are:
Volume Density: .0013
Light Density: .010
Turbulence Frequency: .025
Turbulence Variance: 4.1%
Distance Start: 0
Distance End: 40.98

and the Volume Color is straight black (0,0,0)

My question is, what do I need to edit to get these rays to be darker? I can see them, but they are rather faint. I have been playing with my settings for awhile now, but I figured someone probably knows how to use this tool much better than I do.

My light is a red spotlight with an intensity of 190ish%

I hope someone can help me out here.

Thanks in advance!

for Starters you don't want the volume color to be straight black, it needs something make it 10,10,10 or something,

second if there isn't a background to render against, the volume cameras don't work very well, I do these scene inside 20-50 meter cubes these you can make full black turn specular off.

also turn quality up but don't go 100% on it,

rest doesn't look too bad

Rareth

ok I tried your settings, except that I turned the quality slider to 80, I think that's the step you're missing

computergeek66_4a760078e4

Thanks for your reply, I have been messing around with it and I still can't seem to get what I want (and certainly not anything like what you are getting). Are you using Ray Traced shadows or Deep Shadow Map? Also, when I have the quality set to anything below 99, the resulting shadows and fog look really pixelated (the attached image is at 92). Am I supposed to do something with 3Delight to make that go away?

Also, I created a test scene where I just had Genesis in a 30 meter box with a spotlight above him (with a camera below), and it seems that only the head and hands seem to filter shadows through the fog.

Again, thank you very much for your help so far!

Rareth

baquwa said:

Thanks for your reply, I have been messing around with it and I still can't seem to get what I want (and certainly not anything like what you are getting). Are you using Ray Traced shadows or Deep Shadow Map? Also, when I have the quality set to anything below 99, the resulting shadows and fog look really pixelated (the attached image is at 92). Am I supposed to do something with 3Delight to make that go away?

Also, I created a test scene where I just had Genesis in a 30 meter box with a spotlight above him (with a camera below), and it seems that only the head and hands seem to filter shadows through the fog.

Again, thank you very much for your help so far!

I always use raytraced shadows, shadow bias is at 0.1

render settings shadow samples are 32
Shading Rate is 0.2

if your light is too bright and or your Light Density in volume camera is too high, the effect your looking for can get washed out,

I did another render in the one the spot light is behind the figure and the camera is in front, along with another spot light just to provide some detail, Volume camera and render settings also posted.

computergeek66_4a760078e4

Thank you so much for your help, I moved my spotlight and I got a much better result! The color was changed to blue because I am doing this for a friend and he wanted to see it in blue rather than red.

Thanks again!

Rareth

baquwa said:

Thank you so much for your help, I moved my spotlight and I got a much better result! The color was changed to blue because I am doing this for a friend and he wanted to see it in blue rather than red.

Thanks again!

That looks great!, good job.

kyoto kid

...apologies for bringing this thread out of hibernation but I keep running into a couple issues that are really vexing me.

First:

Every time I load an effects camera into a scene it places it off to the side somewhere and I have to keep manually keying in all the parameter settings (translation and rotation) to move it to the default camera I am working/rendering through. Is there some kind of trick to get it to snap to the camera you are currently viewing though? I tried parenting it but that doesn't work.

Second:

Calculating distance from the camera to the subject/area of focus. This is primarily important for the Volume camera and when using DOF. How is this determined? The Daz Studio parameter coordinates seem to have no relation to an actual linear scale of measure (eg. "+100" on the X axis is not 100' or 100m from dead centre). It seems I have to "guesstimate" the distance from the camera to the subject which is resulting in a lot of time consuming test renders (even after reading user the manual).

Also is there a way to get the Volume camera to affect only a certain light or group of lights in a multi light setup?

XoechZ

Yes, there is a "trick" for camera placement.

Select your default camera and go to Edit - copy selected, then select the atmospheric cam and go to Edit - paste to selected, and viola, the atmospheric cam is at the same place with the same settings (all camera settings, also focus length, zoom, and so on) as your default cam.

Hope that helps.

Lissa_xyz

/edit
Beat. That'll teach me for testing click-loading first. lol

Kyoto Kid said:

...apologies for bringing this thread out of hibernation but I keep running into a couple issues that are really vexing me.

First:

Every time I load an effects camera into a scene it places it off to the side somewhere and I have to keep manually keying in all the parameter settings (translation and rotation) to move it to the default camera I am working/rendering through. Is there some kind of trick to get it to snap to the camera you are currently viewing though? I tried parenting it but that doesn't work.

After loading the effects camera, select the camera you want to copy in the scene tab and hit ctrl+c, then select the effects camera and hit ctrl+v. Doing this will copy the translation/rotation dials to the effects camera. It's not a 1-click solution, but it is easier than manually changing all of the dials. This works on props and things too.

kyoto kid

...thanks. So that is that is what the Copy/Paste is for.

XoechZ

Yes, definitely :-)

And, as Vaskania mentioned, it also works with lights and props and other objects. You cannot copy and paste the objects themseves, but their settings.

Joepingleton

Thanks for the great info on using Atmospheric effects volume camera settings.

This is quick experiment using Rareth's settings on a subsurface gummy Freak 5.
Thanks for looking.

SoulUnit

joeping said:

Thanks for the great info on using Atmospheric effects volume camera settings.

This is quick experiment using Rareth's settings on a subsurface gummy Freak 5.
Thanks for looking.

this is brilliant! (npi) Can you please share your settings for this?

TIA

Joepingleton

Thank you,
I just used Rareth's settings =)

SoulUnit

Thank you yes, I just bought the gummy and would like to try your settings. I meant what were your settings on the gummy, and the lights?

Joepingleton

Sorry i misunderstood what you where asking.

This scene was just Freak 5, a free heart model from CGshare, a spotlight, a volume camera and a black cube.

The volume camera settings are same as Rareth’s settings above, except that the volume color is128,84,62

The spotlight is placed behind the figure with a color of 255,0,0 and an intensity of 200

The cube is black and covers the whole scene to allow the volume camera to function properly.

The gummy settings are from Age of Armour - subsurface - gummy - gummy orange (stock settings with the opacity on the chest turned down to 60% to show the heart)

Then some color and level adjustments in Photoshop.

I hope this helps a little and would love to see how they work for you.

SoulUnit

Hey Thanks I will give it a try and see if it is worthy of posting :)