I have a lighting problem, i have made a Projector that is projecting a map onto a screen, my question is how can i make the light from the projector to the screen look more realistic?? ive included a screen shot of what i have, im hoping someone can give me a simple way to make it look more real.

your gonna have to put it on your site and let us look at it, you did this with one of your posts a long time ago too, you cant directly link. stop doing it because it makes your post look trashy. put it on your site, and ill see if i can help.

I DID put it on my website and i dont direct link i added the link like your supposed to, people just love to make things complicated with this stupid no direct linking crap. but anyways heres the link again its probably going to say im direct linking again when i added it the right way. http://3dgs.bravehost.com/index.html the preview is under the two top photos, if it dosnt work just copy and paste it in a new window becouse i give up.

The model for the light beam is simply white... Why is it simple white? Light has a source. Close to the source it is bright and away from the source it´s getting less visible.

The light in the air is only visible because it gets reflected by particles like dust. Dust flying in the air is no clean white surface. It´s more like smoke.

The lightning doesnt match. It´s unrealistic. THe wall with the light picture is dark because it has to be dark because otherwise the picture wouldnt be very well visible. It is very difficult to keep the rest of the room like the table with the projector bright. It would be good if it would that easy. But that isn´t realistic.

Light beams are mapped from inside to outside. For example for a flashlight I would simply create a cylinder flipp the normals and delete the bottom. Then I would rotate it forward to the default view direction. Then I would make a gradient texture from white to black add some noise and turbulence and then slightly color it yellow with colorbalance. Then I would smooth the noise with a blur filter a little bit. Simply unwrap the model and load the skin.

Then attach it to the flashlight and give it the bright flag.

it sounds complicated lol i dont think i can do that.

which part you didn't understood? And did you tried it?

creating a cylinder out of mdl? or wmb? and i dont know how to create gradient textures, i can make them transperant like in my screen shot but thats about all i can do. i adjusted the lighting in the room so it is darker, the screen is bright but i just need light going to the projector to the screen to look like its on. i would possibly like it if when u looked into the lense of the projector it gets really bright like looking into a flashlight.

Allright. I have to correct me. Good that you pointed that out. I ment a cone, not a complete cylinder. Well, the cone was an example for a flashlight. I think for your projector is a pyramid ok. Just make sure to flip the triangles of the light beam.

MDL. Use the gradient filling tool in your photopaint programm. From white to black and then colored with color balance. Or just leave it white, black, grey...

Well the flash light effect is possible but you better try first to get the gradient beam. If that is too difficult for you, making a flashing screen will be impossible for you (it´s totally simple)... Doing a gradient texture is a joke.

Here is what I am talking about: tp://www.bluenightlagoon.de/ablage/gaming/improvedLIGHT.rar

Even if it´s simple as heck, I hate to do the work for others. So don´t get used to it, and learn the basics.

well thanks for our help anyways, but ive already done the cone thing with the fading texture, your texture looks alittle better but im just not happy with how it looks. Is there anyway to use smoke? or fog? idont need the screen to flash. perhaps i could create a rectangle between the projector and screen and add fog inside the rectangle? for would look alittle better than a cone becouse u can see the edges of it when u walk threw it. im gonna experiment with fog. and let u know my results