Fast Volumetric Lights With Apprentice

[ofer]

Hi! Im creating a scene with a lot of moving volumetric lights (~500 lights). All lights are narrow spotlights, and they sometimes overlap. I want to render them with some volume, but the "Vex Lit Fog" shader is very slow. I added a light mask but it is still very slow.

I wonder what to do. I understand that I cannot use i3d because Apprentice cannot write volume textures to disk. Am I right?

I really don't want anything fancy with the volume, just some fog, so maybe there is an easy and common way to fake it?

Thanks.

[stevenong]

Hi ofer,

Yes, you can write i3d files to disk with a 3D Texture Generator ROP using Apprentice.

Since you don't want anything fancy, I would build cones for each light, which are already build for you in the Light Object so you just have to object merge them to a Geometry Object.

Next, assign a shader to each of them. Try the VEX Super Material, adjust the Persp & Para values with a fractal noise texture, for example.

Finally, to speed things up, I'll render them in groups of ten from back to front then comp them all together.

Cheers!

steven

[ofer]

Well, thats a really nice idea. I havn't thought of rendering the lights with cones. I thought about sprites, but cones sounds simpler.

Ill give it a shot. Thanks.

[sibarrick]

Might be worth looking at the lighting cop too, that can do simple fast volumetric stuff as a post process.