Paumanok West (9/14/2010)
bsperan (9/14/2010)
Hmm...
Light cones looks like an interesting effect. However, merely judging from the example video given, I'd say that - at least in some instances - it would be very difficult to use that to simulate Crepuscular Rays with a great deal of realism. For example, having such sun rays filter through the leaves and branches of a tree canopy or through the scaffolding of a building frame would involve a lot of calculations. Is
Power & Light really that sophisticated?
The required sophistication is in the artistry of the user.
There need be no calculations at all. To fake the shadows of swaying leaves, you use a simple video texture on the sides of the cone to introduce shifting opacity stripes.
Hmm... Sorry West, but I'm afraid I'll have to disagree. While that is one way of doing it, you would have to stratigically place a few light cones aroudn the scene in order to get the desired effect.
And while this is possible, it just seems like a work around simply because we can't do it.
As far as IC4 is right now, that method is fine (although you would have to have some fairly accurate alpha channels to simulate when things are cutting through the light... and that can be done.) but since the technology is clearly there for realtime software to actually do things like this, there is no reason why iClone shouldn't get this feature.
These are also referred to as god rays. I made a post on this very suggestion sometime back.
The unreal engine just got this feature about two months ago.
What you are basically asking for is volumetric lighting.
Another fairly simple way this can be done (the devs would need to do this) is to make it so that one directional light would shoot light beams in one direaction. The beams wouldn't be coming from one specific point. There'd just be an infinite number of beams pointing in which ever direacion the light source was facing. To keep things simple, only one directional light would be able to do this at a time.
Or a volumetric light could be implemented to do this. A one volume light per scene would be sufficiant for now I think as a sun light.
Oh, I just recalled an even OLDER post I made where I tried to create my own light cones.
Here's an image I made with my hand made light cones.
I had to place a cone per window.
See, with the program doing this, I wouldn't have to think and worry abou where and how they were placed.
This light cone is made from one of the truncated pyramids in iClone's 3D Blocks props. I forget whether it's Pyramid_03 or Pyramid_04.
Load one of these props and examine the Diffuse texture, which shows you how the sides are mapped.
You want vertical streaks to play across the facets of the pyramid (technically, a frustrum). They should flicker in and out in darkness and have small side-side movements. Note however that the greyscale video needs to be applied to the Opacity channel and not the Diffuse channel.
This will produce the desired effect.[/quote]
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