Here’s the basics of creating God Rays in Blender:
God Rays are those beams of light you see when the sun shines down on a cloudy day or into a dusty room.
They’re also super easy to recreate in Blender.
Here’s how (use Cycles!):
Make the window.
The first thing you need is something for the light to shine through. Windows work great, but it could be anything (a noise texture on a plane, jail bars, or a forest full of trees.)
Make the air.
The reason you see the light beams shining through the window is because of the dust in the air.
In Blender you make this effect with a volumetric shader. Add a cube to your scene and make it big enough to cover the whole room/forest/whatever.
In the Shader Editor, give it a new material with 1 node: a Principled Volume. Turn down the Density to something very small (I used 0.08.)
Make the light.
Add an Area Light. Set the Power to something big (3000 for me) and the Size to something small (0.02 for me.)
The Size of the light controls the sharpness of the light beams.
Point it through your window (or trees or jail bars.) Rotate & position to taste.
