Hi everyone!

I'm trying to create a simple volumetric light. Googling around I found a thread that mentioned it should be easy. All I theoretically need to do is drop an “Atmosphere” node in the scene and connect it to a volumetric material. I tried to do that, but when I render, I don't see the atmosphere. I also don't really know how to control things like the thickness of the atmosphere or anything like that.

Does anyone have any resources, or could anyone offer any direct advice? The help files have been singularly unuseful in this instance.

I've included my test scene. Thanks!

The recipe is this…

Add an atmosphere.
Set it's material to a fog light (v_foglight)
Add a light to the scene and point it at some geometry.
On the Atmosphere node under the Render tab set the light mask to the light you added.
Tweak the volume fog material to match your scene, as the help states, this is dependent upon your scene scale.

Sometimes people will put another piece of geometry between the light and the target geometry to help break up the rays, often this is just a plane with a noise based alpha material such as a gobo.

Hey, thanks for the helpful answer, I appreciate it. Though I don't appreciate you appropriating my thread for a political message. That's not cool. Thanks for your help though.

I managed to get my scene working after taking a look at your material setup. The fog nodes apparently show up in SHOP but not in the Material Pallet. I would never have figured that out.

There doesn't seem to be any fog light in H17.

I've never heard of ‘foglight’ but there is ‘litfog’ atmostphere shader.

Typically I would do this effect with an actual volume, such as a volume grid parented to the camera, or placed in the scene. Working with atmosphere shaders is a pain, and they don't appear in indirect bounces. They also cause problems if your scene contains transparent features.

Thanks for the answer. I tried a little with actual volumes earlier, but got somewhat rough results at first. I will try the litfog shader, but will definitely give the actual volume method another go aswell, based on Your suggestions. Thanks!