Rick Measham wrote:

> A. I'm using photons to allow light to be reflected off an object. 
> However I don't seem to be able to get a perfectly straight beam of 
> light. The image below is a 16u x 16u grid. The spotlight is 72u from 
> the top of the grid and then is masked by the red 'turret' at the top in 
> order to thin it down. This does an OK job, but as the light reflects of 
> more and more objects, the wider the beam gets. Is there any way to stop 
> it getting wider?
> 
> B. Once the light reflects off the first object it starts to interact 
> with the media as I'd expect (the glow) however before it hits that 
> first object, there is no glow! How do I get the glow on the first part 
> of the beam? One solution I had was to start the beam to the left of the 
> masking turret and fit a mirror into the mask, but surely there's a 
> better way?

If you are using a spotlight to create the beam, then the widening may 
be caused by the natural dispersion of the beam.

I suspect that you might get better results by modeling the beam as a 
set of cylinders, maybe with a cylindrical light source in each.

Regards,
John

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