Volumetric Lighting in DAZ Studio

Author: Gary_P

Tools Needed

• DAZ Studio

Support Files

• floor.zip

It's no secret that I love DAZ Studio, so I am always looking for ways to stretch its capabilities. In this tutorial I am going to show you how to create volumetric lighting and fog in DAZ Studio. At the time this tutorial was written, DAZ Studio had no built in way of doing volumetric lighting like some of the other high end programs, so I'm going to show you how to fake it.

Once you have the hang of creating these scenes, you may set the scene up any way you wish, but for the purposes of this tutorial I have included my exact settings so your picture will look the same as mine.

Start up DAZ Studio and create a new camera, or if you have DAZ Studio set to create a camera on a new scene, set your camera's dials to:

Translate X = 0.5 Translate Y = 110.0 Translate Z = 430.0

Rotation X = -2.0 Rotation Y = -1.0 Rotation Z = 0.0

This will place a camera in the correct place for viewing.

Select this camera for viewing by choosing it from the View Selection list.

Let's start off creating a floor, because if you don't have any objects for the light to shine on, there will be nothing to see.

Go up to the top of the screen and click on the Create Primitive.

You did get this plug in when you got DAZ Studio right? If not, then it is in the free models section of DAZ's website.

Let's create a floor for our light to shine on.

Create a Cube primitive 10 ft. units. This will serve as our floor.

Select the cube and set its Y Scale to 1%.

Remember to select the cube in the Scene and not the Camera.

Now let's texture it so it looks like a floor. I have included a floor texture that I made if you would like to use it. It is called floor. Catchy, huh?

Select the floor cube and click on the Surfaces tab. You may have to make the tab visible.

Click on the part of the tree that is labeled Default. This will select the default texture.

Open the texture dropdown next to diffuse Color.

Choose Browse For Image.

Load in the floorJPG texture from where you saved it.

Now the cube looks like a cement floor.

Now it is time to create our light.

Go up to the top of the screen and click on the Create Spotlight button.

Accept all of the defaults.

This will create a spot light in the exact center of the viewport, on the floor, and pointing straight at the back of the scene.

For this tutorial, I will tell you where to position the light.

Select the spotlight and set your light's dials to:

Translate X = 87.0 Translate Y = 130.0 Translate Z = 20

Rotation X = -60 Rotation Y = 90 Rotation Z = 0.

Set the light's Spread Angle to 32, and its Intensity to 100%.

This is important, as the light needs to match the cone perfectly, or the effect will be useless.

If you would like to save some time, you may turn off shadows for the spotlight.

Render the scene.

It does not matter at this point whether you have shadows turned on or off as this is only a test render to see where the light beam will fall.

There are two things wrong with our rendered picture:

#1 is you cannot see the actual light source.

#2 is there are no volumetric lights in the scene, and I promised you there would be.

Let's fix #1 first.

Go up to the top of the screen and click on Create Primitive.

Create the cylinder with Height, Diameter, and Segments all equal to 1.

Leave the Sides set to 8.

This will serve as our light source.

Select your cylinder and set your cylinder's dials to

Translate X = 103.0 Translate Y = 157.0 Translate Z = 20

Rotation X = -60 Rotation Y = 90 Rotation Z = 90.

Render your scene.

What? Can't see the new cylinder light? Too dark?

We can fix that. Point light to the rescue.

Go up to the top of the screen and click on create a Point Light button.

Set your point light's dials to:

Translate X = 90.0 Translate Y = 135.0 Translate Z = 70.

Rotation X = 0.0 Rotation Y = 0.0 Rotation Z = 0.0

Set the point light's Intensity to 50% so it is not too bright.

This will position the point light so you are able to see the cylinder that will be the light.

Render now. Ah! Better.

But where is the volumetric lighting I promised?

Ah now comes the good stuff.

Go up to the top of the screen and click on Create Primitive.

We're going to create a Cone to be our fake light beam.

Create the cone with Height = 7, Diameter = 3, Segments = 1, Sides = 12.

This will serve as our light source.

Select your cone and set your cone's dials to:

Translate X = -4 Translate Y = -28 Translate Z = 20

Rotation X = 0.0 Rotation Y = 0.0 Rotation Z = -30.

Cast Shadows = Off.

This will make the cone invisible to the light rendering engine.

Now let's texture it so it looks slightly foggy. You don't have to do this but you do have to change the Opacity. You can reuse the included a floor texture that I made if you would like to.

Since you are only going to see a ghost image, it is fine for this purpose.

Select the cone and click on the Surfaces tab. You may have to make the tab visible.

Click on the part of the tree that is labeled Default. This will select the default texture.

Open the texture dropdown next to diffuse Color.

You will see that the floor texture is already loaded. Just choose it from the list.

Set the Opacity to 3%

Set the Ambient Color to all white (255 255 255).

Turn off Cast Shadows if it is on. This will hide the cone from the light rendering engine.

OK, time to render. What do you think?

Ooooo, Ahhhh.

You may adjust the cone and the spot light's spread angle to suit your preferences.

You may need to switch to your Perspective View camera for this.

Create a Cube Primitive 12 ft. units. This will serve as our fog.

Select the cube and set its Z Scale to 1% to make it thin.

Set your cube's dials to:

Translate X = 0.0 Translate Y = 0.0 Translate Z = 200.0

Rotation X = 0.0 Rotation Y = 0.0 Rotation Z = 0.0

Cast Shadows = Off

This will make the fog wall invisible to the light rendering engine.

Texture it floorJPG the same as we did for the others.

Set the Ambient Color to all white (255 255 255), and set the Opacity to 5%.

You may change this to determine how thick you want your fog to be.

Ideally, you would use a cloud texture for this.

Here is what the scene looks like from the Perspective View.

Switch back to your default camera and render.

What do you think?

There are many more things you can change to make this look even better, and I can't possibly cover all of them, but feel free to contact me if you have any problems.

Happy rendering!