Volume Scattering With Arnold for Those Dramatic God-Rays

Setting the mood for scene sometimes means having those light rays beaming through the haze. God-Rays, or crepuscular rays as they are known, are amazing, but thing is, volume scattering like that is always expensive in terms of render times. Actually, watching Arvid Schneider’s walks through for creating god-rays in Arnold, this doesn’t seem to be so.

Arnold is amazingly fast at rendering volume scattering. It seems really easy to set up too. It is simply a matter of turning on atmospheric settings and that is pretty much it. Well, it is a little bit more involved than that, but if you are coming from mental ray, this seems so much easier.

Arvid also covers using EIS Lights in Arnold, which can provide a real-world lighting profile and falloff for a more realistic look then the light hits a surface, or shines through a volume such as dust or fog.