Sun Rays Help!

[mr_anderson]

Hey everyone,

I am attempting to create light rays (sun rays, heaven rays, etc). I am having a difficult time finding a tutorial or forum that covers Terragen 3, everything is Terragen 2 which doesn't help me out too much. I have tried playing with the cloud properties, and sun light and still coming up short. Does anyone have a few tips they could spare in this case?

[DocCharly65]

I am not really sure about TG2 but it should work similar or even equal like TG3.

Basically:
First find in the atmosphere/clouds window a tab called "Quality" and mark "receive shadows from surfaces".
Then you should get first sucessful results.

[Dune]

Best is to have the sun at the edge of some hard enough clouds, and have enough atmosphere density for the rays to throw their shadows on, that's all I can say, atm.

EDIT: regarding Doc's statement; if you need only rays from clouds you don't need the shadow setting.

[mr_anderson]

I did try both suggestions, and I am unfortunately still coming out with nothing.

[Oshyan]

TG3 is built on TG2, many things are similar. Tutorials should often work the same.

As Ulco says, you do not need Receive Shadows from Surfaces in the clouds. If you are trying to get godrays *from terrain*, you would need Receive Shadows enabled *in the atmosphere*. If you just want shadows *from clouds* into the atmosphere, you don't need any of them enabled.

Terragen's godrays are rendered realistically, generally speaking. This means they don't happen as often as they might in other software, where the effect is often artificial and used just for drama (this happens a lot in games for example). It also means it can be harder to just make them show up if you know you want them. Higher Haze Density in the atmosphere can help. Having a higher cloud layer (higher altitude) can also help, with sharper edges to the clouds.

If you share a TGD here we can try to help you achieve the effect without modifying your scene too much.

- Oshyan

[jdent02]

Terragen's godrays are rendered realistically, generally speaking. This means they don't happen as often as they might in other software, where the effect is often artificial and used just for drama (this happens a lot in games for example). It also means it can be harder to just make them show up if you know you want them. Higher Haze Density in the atmosphere can help. Having a higher cloud layer (higher altitude) can also help, with sharper edges to the clouds.

Funny, I've usually seen the opposite, as in god rays show up very easily for me and it's hard to get rid of them sometimes.......Maybe I'm just accidentally setting things up in a way that favors them.