Cannot see Sun Disk in Max 2021 or Max 2022

[RobH22]

I'm unable to see the sun disk in Max 2021 or Max 2022. I've read the posts here I can find and followed one of Lele's suggestions and still cannot see it. It's not visible in Progressive or Bucket render. I have a very simple setup. V-Ray sun, accepted the Environment yes/no question and attached my sun to the Sky Shader. I must be missing something simple. Any ideas?

[urbanite]

Never happen to me, but it looks how it suppose to be. Try to add lens effect to see if pops in or just put 100 value on sun size (right now is like a dot).

[dean_dmoo]

If you lower the exposure in the vfb you should start to see it. Looks to me that the brightness is too much so is getting blown out with the sky around it.

[^Lele^]

Take the sky map out of a domelight, if it's in one.
It ought to work fine if put in the BG.

[Morne]

Likely your sun is too high in the sky. The sun disk will NOT appear where you see it in the viewport. Imagine an infinate line extending from the sun target, past the sun disk. If you can't see where the line "ends", then you wont see the sun in the render.
As a test, either tilt your cam up a bit, or lower your sun by a lot. At same time, under expose the image to see past the overblown sky, so the disk is more visible.

When you've detemined which one of those are the issue, you can reverse the process to get where you're aiming to be.

Judging from the shadow angles, the sun is just too high to see it in the render.

[RobH22]

Thanks guys I appreciate this. I don't do many exteriors so I'm rusty with lighting them. I did figure it out last night. Morne was closer to my noobiness I think. I had the sun object too close to the other objects. Even as that icon looked as if the sun disk should be right where it was, the actual disk was in fact way, way higher. When I moved the sun icon much farther away from the center, the sun began to come down and showed up in proximity of the icon. What's silly on my part, is that I just didn't look up higher and higher in the sky to find that it was way up there. I guess I'm tired...lol... That seems like the obvious diagnosis but I struggled for a couple of hours. Dooooh!

Anyway, nobbieness aside, I'm good to go now, a little embarrassed but cranking along...

Thank you!

[dean_dmoo]

^Lele^ As we are discussing the sun position, is there an advised minimum distance from the target or 0,0,0 point to get the most accurate sunlight? Like keep a minimum of 1000meters distance?

[^Lele^]

Not really, no.
All that matters is the angle between sun and horizon (i.e. the line connecting sun and target against the horizon line), there is no requirement for the sun position, which is always considered "infinitely" far away.
It goes without saying that having a sun fixture a bit farther from the target will make for easier fine adjustments, and having it *very* far out may mimic the sun position in the projected sky a bit more closely, but it'll never quite match it exactly.

[dean_dmoo]

Thanks, that was also my experience.

[^Lele^]

Sorry i jumbled the post up a bit, i fixed it now.

[RobH22]

Now after experimenting and knowing what to look for, keeping the sun close by helps to modify it. If it gets too far away then you have to zoom out to see it sometimes. I do see now that it is infinite no matter where it is actually sitting in the scene.

[^Lele^]

A trick i use often with the sun is to move it around in its local coordinates, so that Z will always point towards the target, and this then allows me to slide the sun fixture in or out to fit my scene scale and current needs.
This can also be done without seeing the sun node, using spinners, which helps not having to change views.