Why does my volumetric light disappear when I disable camera visibility? I have been playing around with volumetric lighting and wanted to make a basic render. I create a point light put a UV sphere around it and deleted some of the faces to get the volumetric light. However the cube for which I'm using to control the volume scatter is still visible. I went an unchecked the Camera for ray visibility but the moment I do that my volumetric light disappears. Any suggestions?

With camera turned on:


With camera turned off:
Disabling camera ray visibility prevents an object or shader from being evaluated until after a ray has bounced for the first time. Directly visible volumetric light comes from striking the volume on the first hit. By disabling camera ray visibility, you prevent this interaction since there is no first hit on the volume.

What exactly are you trying to accomplish? I'm not seeing anything wrong with your first image.

Btw, you may get somewhat improved performance by using an emission texture on your light itself instead of enclosing it in a sphere with holes. The texture will prevent sampling around the solid areas of the sphere. Use the texture coordinate > normal output to mapping on a point light.