Hello all,

I'm really hoping someone here can tell me what I'm doing wrong here. I'm
more of a novice than a newbie to PovRay, but this is a major brick wall.

In short, I'm trying to recreate the media effects displayed in the sample
image for the menu item under Insert | Special Effects | Atmospheric Media.
Unfortunately, even though I finally found the source file for that image
and copied the code into my scene (only changing position numbers), the best
I get is something that resembles an oil truck on fire.

I've scrambled my grey fluff over this almost all day and I'm finally
cooked. Google returns absolutely nothing useful (the Bryce tutorial on how
to do it was interesting but entirely irrelevant). I must appeal to those of
you that know what you're doing better than I (or at least drink coffee).

I'm still alive enough to realize that you probably can't help me without
reading my code, so please feel free to download my 939KB file here:
http://www.roboticsresources.com/spottedcowstudios/media.pov . I know it's
huge...long story. Skip from line 103 to line 24150 if you don't want to die
of boredom. You may get a bunch of errors on the LDRAW stuff; just comment
it out or cut it completely. Oh, and you'll need the Lens.inc file I'm
using: http://www.roboticsresources.com/spottedcowstudios/lens.inc.

And as for what I'm trying to do (no, the pillar of smoke is not what I
want!): there is a light source behind the white figure standing in the
middle of the cloud (comment out the media and you'll see him there). What I
want to do is create an animation where the light source moves vertically
behind him, illuminating media around the figure so that it looks like you
can see the light rays (sometimes you see this with the sun and clouds, or
in a dusty room with strong sunlight). I can do the animation itself easily
enough, but somehow a square black smoke cloud isn't exactly the kind of
atmospheric media I had in mind. It's a common enough theatrical trick, but
I'm having trouble simulating it for reasons unknown and incomprehensible to
me.

If someone could *please* tell me what I'm doing wrong I will be grateful
for a long, long time (I won't be around here for eternity, sorry).

Thanks,
-Mike Thorn
"I don't need help. I need a personal PovRay consultant."

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