Volumetric Light Material

Development Rendering
1

Hello everyone,
so I were recently trying to figure out how I could achieve a volumentric “light” effect (it’s not about the light itself).
As I find it hard to describe it, I tried to create an example (I know it looks like it was made in 2004 >.>):

I hope it’s clear what I try to achieve. It’s just about that emerging light around the edges, I don’t want any light coming off etc. only the effect of a volumetric light.

So the questions I have are:

  • Is it actually possible to achieve that look without a mesh but only a masked texture within a material?
  • If yes, how hard would it be to achieve that?
  • How could I achieve that effect?
    If someone has already made this, I would be grateful for any hints as my abilities within the material editor are just above basic…
    Anyways I would be thankful for any advice :slight_smile:

Greetz,
Dakraid

2

Update:
So I realized that achieving this effect with a texture is most-likely not achievable, so I went ahead and tried using a mesh, the result is not perfect but it looks not too bad in my opinion:

It’s done by unwrapping the mesh in 3ds Max using the cylinder projection. The material itself is set to additive, a color into the emissive and a linear gradient (in my case the VGradient) plugged into the opacity.
I guess it’s better than nothing…

Greetz,
Dakraid