Volume Aerial Perspective

The Volume Aerial Perspective effect simulates the result of viewing objects from a distance through the Earth's atmosphere. The atmospheric effect works together with the V-Ray Sun and the V-Ray Sky system to calculate an approximation to the aerial perspective effect. It is faster to calculate than the V-Ray Environment Fog effect, although the result is just an approximation - for example, the V-Ray Aerial Perspective atmospheric cannot produce volumetric shadows.

UI Path: ||V-Ray Node Editor|| > World > Add > Effects > V-Ray Volume Aerial Perspective

The V-Ray Aerial Perspective node needs to point to a V-Ray Sun Light in order to work. You can either drag and drop a V-Ray Sun Light from the Outliner or select it using the eyedropper tool and connect it to the Sun parameter.

Alternatively, a V-Ray Sun can be selected using a Selector node and connected to the Sun input socket of the Volume Aerial Perspective.

You can disable the V-Ray Sun if you do not need it, but the V-Ray Aerial Perspective effect must be connected to a Sun to work properly.

This section describes the input sockets of the node. Some sockets have dedicated parameters, which are further described below, and some sockets are just inputs.

Sun – Determines the Sun object that allows the Volume Aerial Perspective to work properly. You can connect it either using an Object Selector node, or through the eyedropper icon.

Filter Color (input socket) – Allows a color node to determine the Filter Color.

You can find the parameters of this node either in the Node menu in the V-Ray Node Editor or in the World Properties tab.

Visibility Range (m) – Specifies the distance, in meters, at which the fog has absorbed 90% of the light coming from objects behind it. Lower values make the fog appear more dense, while larger values reduce the effect of the aerial perspective. 

Atmospheric Layer Height (m) – Controls the height of the atmosphere layer, in meters. Lower values can be used for artistic effects. The value is in meters and is converted internally based on the current Maya units.

Inscattered Light Multiplier – Controls the amount of sunlight scattered from the atmospheric effect. The default value 1.0 is physically accurate; lower or higher values could be used for artistic purposes.

Filter Color – Affects the color of the unscattered light.

Affect Environment – When Disabled, the atmospheric effect applies only to camera rays that hit actual objects, but not to rays that hit the sky. This is because the VRaySky texture already takes into account the amount of scattered sunlight. However, it is possible to enable this option for artistic effects, especially with low visibility ranges.

Affect Background – Specifies whether the effect is applied to camera rays that hit the background (if a background other than VRaySky is used). This option is enabled by default, but some interesting effects are possible when disabled.

Affect Alpha – Enables volumetric contribution to the alpha channel. This option is not supported with V-Ray GPU, yet.