In introduction movies played at the beginning of today games, we have seen light squeezing through other objects in some fog environment. This Volume Light give us some mystic mood and sensation for fantasy or hugeness depending on the closing objects and camera projection.

In this tutorial I will show you how to create Volume Light in 3D Studio MAX. 3D Studio MAX is may be the most popular 3D software program for making 3D models, effects and animation for games, movies, commercials, etc.

In our example will use just a simple text made from 2D splines (Create / Shapes / Text) and next extruded (Modify / Extrude) to 3D object. Next create a Camera looking to 3D text and position the scene like shown on the picture below. This have to be enough good to view the Volume Light projected through the text.

Now let's create the light source for the scene. We will use three Target Direction Lights positioned back from the 3D text and projecting the light trough the text. To get the real volume effect from the light turn on Shadows checkbox in General Parameters and leave shadow type to be Shadow Map for the three lights.

Next go to Atmosphere & Effects section and click Add button. From the list select Volume Light. Repeat this for each light. Now let's Setup the parameters. Click on Setup button and set all the parameters in appeared window like shown on the picture below. Of course, you can try to experiment with all the parameters to get other effect. Tou have to note that Filter Shadow parameter have influences on rendering speed and shadow quality. Also turning Noise On will give you some smoke and cloudy effect to the light.

For better examination of Volume Light you can animate the Camera, so the view point will pass in front of the 3D text and trough the light. Now lets render the movie and see the result.