Light through stained glass

[Jim Scott]

For the light through the stained glass windows, set the Visible Light parameter in the light’s General settings to “Volumetric” and you should get visible shafts of light colorized by the glass.

I’m not sure what you mean by “effect it gone.” When I copy a light the copy has all the same settings as the original. Could you provide more detail and possibly upload your project file?

[Rick Morton]

Thanks. I’ll try that. I think I did, but the colored glass didn’t seem to affect the light. How transparent should I make the glass?
For the other problem, I created a spotlight. Made it volumetric and added dust. When I render, I see the light beam coming to the floor with dust. I wanted three, so I just copied that light and pasted twice. The volumetric and dust do not show up on the pasted lights, even tho’ they show in the parameters.

[Jim Scott]

Reduce the “Absorption Distance” in the Transparency settings of your glass material.

I don’t know what issue is at play concerning your duplicated lights. When I copy and paste lights, or Command+drag to duplicate them, the copies all match the original both in their settings and in the render. Could you post a simple example project showing the issue?

[Rick Morton]

OK. I’ll give that a try. Not sure how to post a project.

[Jim Scott]

To post a project just drag the file into the reply window.

[Rick Morton]

Thanks, Jim. Now I’m having trouble just getting the volumetric light to show up . I’m trying to have a few colored spots hitting the floor, with a slight “dust” look. I put spots in the scene. I see it hitting the floor as a blue area. I set to Volumetric. I get no visible light in the render. I created a new project and put a light in and it works fine. I do have one light in this project that is working fine. I’m stumped.

[Jim Scott]

If you are getting inconsistent results — some lights working and others not — I have no idea what is happening. Have you rebooted your computer and then gotten the same results?

What happens if you copy all of the elements into a new project? And what renderer are you using (standard, physical…)? Again, it would be helpful if you could post the project file and I could see if I get normal behavior on my system.

Good luck.

[Rick Morton]

I copied the lights and pasted into a blank project and the volumetric work. Why would that be? Everything else seems to work fine in the project. Using physical render with nothing changed other than ambient added. I went back to an old version of this project and put two lights in and they work fine. I had saved this project under a new name so I could delete all the lights and start from scratch in the new version. Now only the one light is showing volumetric and dust, the other lights won’t. Here’s the project. I dumped some stuff out to make it a bit simpler but still don’t see the lights. I’m trying to get two or three colored areas to hit the floor, as if coming through colored glass somewhere.
Thanks.
13518_sampleroom.c4d.zip

[Jim Scott]

I see what you are reporting. When I copy the first three lights in your scene and paste them into a new one they work fine, but don’t in your original scene. Why? I don’t know. When I get a chance to play around with it more I’ll see if I can find something, but nothing jumps out at me at first overview.

[Brian Jones]

files do (rarely but it happens) go corrupt in a fashion that copy/pasting the contents to a new file will fix the problem you’d have to ask support about more details.