Laser/Beam light
Using a thin emissive cylinder for faking a laser is neat and all, but being able to actually refract and interact with glass materials and stuff would be pretty neat. I imagine it wouldn't be too dissimilar to the spot light in implementation. Probably posted before but I feel such a simple yet powerful tool could benefit a lot of people.
10 Comments
Other than being "pretty neat", what's the practical advantage of having this type of light source?
* @Jason van Gumster * Having a laser light type would be practical for people who are making sci-fi animations, laser light show simulations, and for artists who need lasers in their art piece.
check how pathtracing work. It will hit small laser point almost never. Even with 1° spotlight it will be bad. So use another render engines with SPPM or Bidir MLT. There should be lasers.
Also laser can be cheated with emission plane. Search for old IES imitation.
There are many instances where adjustable light angle for area lights would be useful. Why would anyone restrict Blender by not wanting this ability?!?!?! It shouldn't be very hard to have an angle offset for light rays perpendicular to surface norrmals.
Sounds sort of similar to volume lights.
* @rodgerdaledavis * except volume lights don't emit light in a straight line to a single & straight direction.
I think having a setting for "parallel light" on the area lights/spotlights would be one way to go, similar to the sunlight behaviour. This would indeed be very useful for simulating laser beams!
I also tried to figure out how to do this a while back. I ended up using an emissive material with a weight node to mask the angle where light is emitted. You'll need to use a number like 0.9999999999 on the facing blend value to get a tight angle. You'll also need to use a crazy high number for the strength to see any light. I'd attach an image but can't figure out how :D
In real life a laser is invisible unless it interacts with a solid (Like particles of smoke or in the case of really powerful lasers, air molecules)
Why would this proposal be different from a spotlight with a very small angle?
* @ammusionist * I've tryied to do a laser beam before, and there are some issues :
The spot light can only be 1° wide minimum, it's far too big for a laser and it's still a cone shape, not a straight line with a straight direction of light rays. Other lamps "scatter" the light rays too much.
* @ammusionist * spotlight is point, and minimal angle is far from laser. But there is another problem. Pathtracing from camera.