Hi everyone, I'm looking for help in making a searchlight beam in Poser (I use Poser 11). I've been experimenting with tutorials on volumetric lighting, but it seems like they're more geared toward the appearance of the beam from a flashlight, or a hallway spotlight. Generally something of a short distance. The effect I'm aiming for is that of a searchlight beam from an aircraft whose occupants are looking for something on the ground. Or perhaps a searchlight sweeping the skies. I figure there must be tutorials out there on the subject, but so far I'm unable to find them. As always, any help is truly appreciated.

Steve

Volumetrics will do it but it may take a lot of trial and error to get it right. A useful cheat is to make a truncated cone, which you can parent to plane and position accordingly. Make it semi transparent and set ambient to 1 or higher.

If you are thinking of Hollywood like search beams ... easy actually. take a cylinder ... extend it from your light ... make it transparent with a slight yellow-white color ... and give it a small emission value. Most spot lights like this aren't cone shaped.

Volumetrics can do it, but the adjustment is quite touchy and render times will be long. I'd go with the truncated cone (not a wide cone, Boni, but a gradually widening cone). Parent a Poser spotlight to the cone and adjust the Poser light's spread angles to match the cone prop.

These are test renders from where I was setting such "beam of light" props up; first two are Firefly, last one is Superfly. The Firefly renders only have mesh lighting (Poser spotlights are off). In the Superfly render, the Poser spotlight spread angles needed to be narrowed, and the prop blur needed adjustment.

If you don't model, I can make that. The Cessna's headlights are rectangular; is your searchlight circular?

Test of navigation lights and prop blur (GIF animation)

scanning beam test (AVI animation)

Seachnasaigh, I stand corrected by one of th e masters on lighting. Nicely done, thank you.

Boni and Sam, actually I'd considered the truncated cone approach before I posted this in the forum. Sam, I'm not sure how the spotlight and the cone work together... could you explain that part? My original thinking was to take the cone prop, attach the leading edge to my spotlight model, give it a yellowish cast and make the whole thing semi-transparent. I was also thinking of making a transparency map that gives the appearance that the far end of the cone of light is fading out... that way it's not just a crisp-edged light beam from beginning to end. I think I'll try experimenting a bit. I'll let you know how it goes

Probably not explained myself clearly enough. :)

I meant "light" as in the light model on your aircraft or whatever you are using. Not an actual Poser light. So, essentially the same as the approach you considered.

If your camera view will show where the light beam hits, then I would attach a Poser spotlight. Scale it to match the searchlight lens diameter, and position it so that the Poser spotlight's lens is just outside of the searchlight prop's lens. This screengrab shows a Poser spotlight nearly in place. It needs to be nudged a bit further forward to clear the prop searchilght's lens.

You'll need to adjust the Poser spotlight's "start" and "stop" angles so as to match the cone's spread angle, and have a fairly sharp light intensity dropoff ("stop" angle will be only a little wider than "start" angle).

This is a (low poly) searchlight beam prop. I would use an Edge_Blend node to soften the outer edge's visibility, and apply a gradient transmap to fade the far end away.

This zip contains two prop files: the searchlight beam with a Poser spotlight attached, and a basic searchlight housing prop.

searchlight

That looks really good - thank you everyone! As soon as my work/sleep schedule allows, I'' have a go at it