Hi all,

Just wanted to share something I figured recently while creating teaching materials.

In Non-Sequential, you can use a Source Ray Array with enough density to make a continuous solid beam. The actual sampling required is to be tested on every machine (due to screen resolution), but it did the job for me in this animation I made. All the frames are generated with OpticStudio and Fiji was only used to compile the AVI file.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9DlwIyLc38 (static preview below)

The beam size is changed by updating the number of rays in the array using SETNSCPROPERTY with code 161 or 162.

Note that I also used a Source Ray Array to fill the aperture profile on the left as the ray colors are more realistic than those you put on Objects.

EDIT: the ray thickness in the NSC Shaded Model didn’t seem to have an impact on the necessary sampling (as I expected).

The thing that I like is that although its an animation, the raytracing is actually correct.

Hope it helps, and take care,

David