When Stephen said surround the cylinder by a box he meant a box that 
surrounds a large part of the scene being rendered, not just around the 
cylinder. Not sure if you understood that, because looking at your script it 
appears that you were only containing the narrow long cylinder and not 
making a *room* with it in which to place the cylinder.

Of course, I'm only speculating on what your trying to make and so maybe you 
*do* want a close-fitting box around the cylinder. Anyway, guess I'm saying 
I can't understand the intent of the scene you're putting together so I 
can't go further with helping about the objects in it.

However, back to media... I should have made it a point to tell you the 
scattering {1,1.5 extinction 0.5} could prove very obscuring when in large 
containers holding it. That 1.5 (or rgb 1.5, which it implies) essentially 
blots out light over a very short distance along the camera line-of-sight. 
It'll take practice to fit the proper values to the scale of the scene, so 
change the scattering color and extinction numbers to whatever appears 
correct for the situation.

Another thing, I noticed you left off radius and falloff (and tightness) in 
the 'cylinder' light source. Unless you want the defaults of radius 0.75, 
falloff 1.0 and tightness 0 (sharpest, brightest edged) then you'll probably 
want to adjust those (I had to look up the defaults so hopefully that is 
still correct).

And, like Stephen said, looking at the sample scene files can really help.

Let us know how you're progressing with the "beam inside glass". Feel free 
to ask more questions.

Bob Hughes

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