"Bob Nagler" <bna### [at] lblgov> wrote in message
news:403a49ed$1@news.povray.org...
> Does anyone know of a good way to create a laser beam. They way I tried
> it always looks bad when two beams intersect, or when the beam is viewed
> through a glass surface (this is crucial in my case). In these cases the
> color changes (sometimes to black), you get shadows, ...
> I just tried a cilinder with transmit and filter on. Emission does'n
> seem to work either.

Could be a "too low max_trace_level" problem (highly likely) or needing
'merge' when doing CSG of the shapes. And if using media, the samples
number(s) need to be adjusted higher. Also, since you mentioned shadows, be
sure to set the object to have 'no_shadow' too. Of course that would only be
if you are using just filtered pigments on the cylinders.

Lasers have been done in the past, so searching for some here in the
newsgroups (p.b.scene-files or p.b.images groups mainly) should net a few
examples. Even a web search could certainly bring something up.

Although there is a laser.pov scene file included with POV-Ray it dates from
early on, before media or parallel lights existed. Which brings me to giving
a URL showing all the scene files already rendered, really helps to
reference them:
http://caramel.oc.chemie.tu-darmstadt.de/lemmi/povray35.html
There's a version 3.1 reference too.

Bob H.

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