light rays

[demonicloud]

iam trying to make light rays shine through a static mesh, so that theres a light trail leading to the light on the floor, but i cant make those show up, even when i enable render light shafts, or turning up the brightness.

if it helps im using a directional light for this

can anybody tell me what im doing wrong?

[CoffeeGrunt]

I can't get directionals to show decent light rays either, has anyone else got a solution?

[Wyldhunt]

The only rays that I've ever noticed produced by directional lights happen when the camera is directly facing into the direction that the light is coming from, and a solid mesh partially obscures the cameras view of the light source... Kind of like staring into the sun when there's a tree on the top of the hill and you're looking past the tree into the sun.

Then, you'll see lightshafts form around the part of the mesh that's blocking your view of the light source.

Since directionals have no true 'source' it's more of an angle thing, I guess. As long as the camera is facing exactly opposite of the directionals light direction then it'll work... as long as the light is shining directly past a mesh.

Of course, I may have just missed something tweakable. That's with the default settings. I think I changed the tint of the shafts since the default was the same white as the light itself for some reason, but that's it. It works fairly well if you're in a dense forest of trees. When you look up into the canopy, you get shafts coming down through the branches.

EDIT:

Here. Jump to about 2:50: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KG2lof9pWL8#

That's how it works. Only when facing the light.

[iLikeTheUDK]

DemoniCloud, I've got no idea what you're talking about.
you could post an image, and then it might help me understand.

[ffejnosliw]

I'm not seeing any issue with the light shafts functionality. I just placed and oriented a DirectionalLight, enabled Render Light Shafts, and the light shafts were being displayed as expected. it is dependent on you looking in the direction of the light and having something int he way to occlude the light and produce the shafts as was mentioned, but it does appear to be working properly to me.