When the spotlight falls, the dance begins

Just testing DAZ Studio 3’s Volumetric Lighting, don’t mind me. If nothing else, it’s a good excuse to post a render of a gorgeous elven ranger who is armed to the teeth. Go on. Count those swords. I’ll wait.

Using the Volumetric Lighting is easy –

1. Add a spotlight (Create->New Spotlight). In thise case I’ve set it to Y=300 and pointing directly down (X Rotate = -90)
2. Make sure it’s selected in the Scene tab then head into DAZ Built-in Content->Shaders->Uber->UberVolume
3. Double-click Parent Cone to Light
4. In the Scene tab, expand the Spotlight and select Spotlight 1 Volume then, in your Surfaces tab (you do have it open, don’t you?) make sure that Spotlight 1 Volume is also selected. As with any Shader effect, you need to have both the object and it’s material selected, remember
5. Back in the Content tab, double-click Cloud, Dust or Smoke and fine-tune the effect in your Surfaces tab to taste
6. Finally, expand the Volume to cover the entire scene (or as much as you need) in the Paramaters tab by adjusting Z Scale. For this scene I set it to 300% so that the smoke effect went all the way down to the floor

That might sound complex, but it’s not – it’s just harder to explain that it is to do. Try it and see.

There’s lots of potential to Volumetric Lighting – from fog effects to light spilling out of dusty warehouse windows, from adding a subtle depth to a romantinc render to over-the-top rock-god ground smoke MTV video. And much, much more.

Yeah. Tis good. Expect to see more!

EDIT: For more information about UberVolume, here’s the instruction manual online.