Render/light tests

After testing glass, metal and diffuse on spheres under a spotlight we realized we needed fog to show the cone of light (volumetric lighting). I tested some spotlights using fog but the render seemed to be taking a while. I had another attempt at creating fog with the robot character imported into the scene to see how long one frame would take. Using maya fluids to create a 3D container I filled it with a gradient and decreased it in density to show a subtle cone. 

I tried a second test using a cube and Rendermans Pixar volume and decreased density float to again show a subtle outline of light. This took about the same length of time however when a camera move intersected the Pixar volume, the fog was no longer visible which is shown in the second clip below. 

Camera move rendered with renderman moving through the fog using maya fluids.

Camera move rendered with renderman moving through the fog using Pixar volume.

This would prevent us from creating close up shots of the character. 

As well as this we noticed that the edge of the floor was visible in batch renders but not single frame renders. There was also a noise problem when rendering out a batch render which I need to try and fix before we reach the rendering stage of production for this project.