Creating Atmos Light Rays Projection, from Behind the Camera

[RobUfer]

Hey friends! Here’s a creative task question that comes up around once every 2-3 years… just seldom enough for me to not write it down in my book of tricks… until now, naturally.

What are some ways that you all would create some atmos rays that are coming from behind the camera (like the film projector in behind Nicole in AMC lore)?

Object rays in action get close, but can’t really get the origin to start behind the camera, nor emit directly toward the camera from center of the screen if I try and cheat them by emitting them from the projection screen image…

Feeling like there are a number of ways to tackle this, and would appreciate some insights!

[kirk]

You can find some smart people (and me) discussing this very topic here:

Cinema Projector Beam

It’s been a couple years now, but I have done this exact thing. It was pretty fiddly and slow to render, but it worked. The trick was that the light/rays combo breaks if they get too far outside the frame of your Action. I seem to remember having to build a super-sized action node with the light in frame, with my rays and source image/gobo attached, and then comp/scale/repo it downstream. I also remember having to crank my light and sample values extremely high to get the ray definition I wante…

[RobUfer]

Thanks @kirk ! Really helpful! the larger scaled action was the key for me! Much appreciated!