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Cheating Volumetric Light Rays in Cycles (Patreon)

Published:
2022-05-12 02:49:53
Imported:
2026-06
Tags:

Content

Just a quick follow up to the "Optimizing Cycles" post a couple days ago! Folks may already know it, but it's been really useful lately so I wanted to talk about it just in case! 

Files

Cheating Volumetric Light Rays in Cycles

Just a quick follow up to the "Optimizing Cycles" post a couple days ago! Folks may already know it, but it's been really useful lately so I wanted to talk about it just in case!

Comments

Pinpoint12

Oh wow, I actually hadn't seen this before, this is awesome thank you!!

Found And Explained

Great stuff! Very useful. Wonder if we will see any tips for optimizing landscape shots? How do you blend the horizon in with a HDRI or sky? (I know its like a huge cube of fog but surely there's a better "Ian" way)

Blake Rizzo

That's so much fun oh my gosh.

Tolga Katas

awesome brother! thanks a lot!

JRugg

So simple and so useful. Exactly why I loved the lazy tutorials that helped me dig into blender. This would actually be an awesome lazy tutorial!

alex

When is that blender to davichi video comming?Really excited about that one.

Trinita-38

Hi Ian you always provide the right tutorial at the right time, thank you so much! It will be great to have a blender compositing tutorial for complex scenes and how to manage both cycles and eevee in the same sequence. What is your feedback about TurboRender addon? Can't wait to see the new Dynamo episode

Pete Burges

Proving once again that this is hands-down the best value Patreon to subscribe to. Eventually you'll have to compile all these tutes into a full VFX course for the next generation of padawans...

zheheng qu

wondering if there's method apply this effect into eevee?

IanHubert

I feel like you shouldn't have to! Eevee's volumetrics are already so natively good that I think you shouldn't have to cheat it!

Richard Cave

I am working on a forest scene and been crying about the render times, thank you thank you thank you,

Richard Cave

Oh to add, I have been putting off blender since its inception as its been too hard, I am working faster and harder in blender in the last two weeks of downloading than I have ever done in cinema 4d, maxon have turned into a really sucky company to work with.

Kaspar Kuld

holy moly man! that's some useful stuff!

NickTricc

I was doing an attic that needed indoor volumetric.. I went for unreal engine and learned how to set everything up there.. yet, I could’ve cheated things this easy? 😁 Great tut!

Second Dune

Moves the sun around and it actually lights his face. Ian IS Blender.

Pagan Head

so goooooood! I say that every time I get to see your videos. Thank you.

Blake Rizzo

I was just thinking about that this could be used to recreate rain fall from clouds??? Animate the Vornoi texture and get that cloud rain from afar look?

Chris Mcfall

So perfectly timed! Im doing a stylised render thats a biiiit heavy on the volumetric lighting , cheers me dears!

Pixelumen

This is perfect Ian. I just so happen to need a flash light beam and this renders so fast! Thank you so much.

Sgt_Squarepants

Just a random question, what do you use to add film grain to your shots? Is it done in blender or in another program like davinci resolve or after effects?

IanHubert

Ah yeah! Lately it's been Resolve. For a long time I was making pretty heavy use of FilmConvert, but for the past few years I've mostly been using it just for its grain capabilities, too :D

Sgt_Squarepants

Another question, do you do any compositing in blender or do you do that in other programs? Thanks

Kieron Estrada

Fantastic, thank you for this!! Please take my money!!! :)

Miko Dela

Most of the time, this "spreading" effect is a matter of perspective. Sun rays are parallel, and so are laser beams. It's the perspective that makes them look like they converge.

Alex Morellon

I guess you’right ! Thinking about it, the examples I took were actually from spotlights. But the real thing is the sun, so they should be parallel… thanks for pointing that out !

Willem van der Veere - Studio Friday

Hi Ian, good tut, as usual. But: I planned to use it as underwater godrays (animating the voronoi will do!) to be combined in the video editor with other stuff, so I rendered it with transparent background (prporties panel> render proporties> film> transparent). The beam disappears completely, it only shows up (partly) when some real stuff is behind the beam. Is there a solution for? My project demands stacking of a number of different animations in compositor and/or vid editor.

Carter Burr-Kirven

Are you rendering PNGs, by any chance? Since the beam is entirely emissive, with no alpha channel, it gets wiped out in image formats that don't support premultiplied alpha (long story, TL;DR is that a lot of formats, like PNG, can't store a value that is bright but also transparent, like fire or glows). The easy fix is to render EXRs, which do handle alpha correctly for further compositing. Another option would be to give the beam some alpha by, for example, adding some of the beam's luminance into the alpha channel in the Compositor before it gets saved to an image file. You could also just render on black, and use Add or Screen in compositing! Depends on whether you have any other stuff in the same layer that does need alpha.

JTM

Have you used a PNG with the black value as the alpha?

Willem van der Veere - Studio Friday

To JTM: indeed, alpha was black. In the mean time I tried EXR’s, those worked out fine in both the compositor as vid editor.

Raf Stahelin

Does anyone know where to get access to Discord?

NickTricc

Sure! Go to Ian Huberts patreon page - choose "my membership" at the top. From there you should see "connect to discord" where you can join directly!

Raf Stahelin

Hey thanks man much appreciated. THough I dont see a help channel on there. Is it allowed?

Carter Burr-Kirven

Sure, but how is that different from rendering on black without alpha? You don't have any meaningful alpha values, and some programs might struggle to display the image now

Max Cahill (edited)

Comment edits

2026-09-20 10:00 Something to consider if the intent is to use it as atmosphere/dust/haze rather than light rays, using the noise texture _not_ infinitely stretched along one axis, so you have a domain of fake volumetric dust-ish stuff. still just as cheap but different use case.
2022-05-24 05:49

daniel dulitzky

just in time to use on a project, thank you !

IanHubert

!!! Ok that’s cool- I gotta try that.

Pudding Motion

Okay what the heck did I just watch? crazy stuff, thank you alottttttttttttt!

Rimas Albert

Have you tried K-Cycles and would you recommend it?

Sean O'Skea

Anybody who still needs to be told to turn on Node Wrangler at this point, doesn't deserve you ;)