Laser ray

[scratch33]

Hi,

I need to simulate a laser ray passing through a lense. I have some issue simulating the foggy opacity of this ray. Any advice on how to do this?

Thanks

[frankmci]

Are you trying to do it via actual light ray refraction, volumetric lighting, etc? I'm thinking it's probably faster and easier to just fake it with some geometry. Can you share a picture of the sort of effect you are trying to accomplish?

[FrankPooleFloating]

Yes Scratch. Fake it. imho, it would be a nightmare to get a physical laser beam in Octane. And fake beam would likely render waaaaaaaaaaay the hell faster than a real one.

[scratch33]

Hi,
Thanks for the replie.
I need this kind of thinks. But the rays go through a mechanics part, then a glass tube.
I can't post scene at this time.

How do you fake this kind of effects?

Thanks for youre help.

[frankmci]

I think I'd probably use geometry to generate a matte pass for the beam, then use that matte to fake all the glow, transparency, speckles, etc. in post. If the beam needs to provide actual illumination in the scene, I'd do a separate pass with an emission material assigned to the beam geometry.