real sun/skylight

[plastic_]

http://www.richardrosenman.com/maxwell.htm



please correct me if i'm wrong but i think this kind of interaction between warm sunlight and cool skylight just isn't possible with an orange directional light and some gradient environment/hdri.

i've seen this quality of lighting only with old arnold images and maxwell pics.

[percydaman]

theres no doubt they look nice. I just cant go with something slower when I can achieve 90% of that and have it render quite speedily. And my clients dont give a crap about it as long as it looks good to them and is delivered on time.

I would love to play around with it on a personal level.

[vlado]

Well, you can do it with a HDR map and a directional light... Writing an environment map to simulate the diffusion of sunlight in the atmosphere is not too difficult either...

Best regards,
Vlado

[vlado]

I forgot DreamScape too... as far as I know, it can generate an accurate skylight panorama for a given sun position...

Best regards,
Vlado

[plastic_]

i will experiment with it when i have more time, but i never managed to get convincing outdoor lighting with a hdri environment. it always lacks something i can't really describe.

[Geddart]

For the warm/cold interaction: A good HDR + directional Light should do the trick theoretically. But you guys are right it's hard to get it that good and that fast (i mean the setup ) in Vray. I think it's a legitimate Wish cause many People use Vray for architectural Exteriors that use some sort of Daylight.

Concerning Dreamscape. Yes it can do that i think. Look at this Thread for more Info. I'm not exactly sure if it does it in real HDR though.

One thing that makes it look so cool is that overbright parts glow depending on their real Energy intensity. Maxwell itself does this depending on kind of real world camera settings. (No Post Bloom? Richard?)

[RErender]

I have a couple of hdri's that Goncalo produced from that scene ( or a similar scene) they have terrific dynamic range, I'm not sure though if they were out put at once or different exposures layered in hdrshop. Maybe he will read this and let us know

[richard_rosenman]

Hey guys;

I usually fake this kind of lighting with VRay, MR, etc, for all my production renders anyway using a warm key light in conjunction with a cool blue skylight. This effectively lights the parts hit by direct lighting with a warm light and those parts indirectly hit with cool blue light.

Of course, the results between a spectral renderer and non-spectral renderer will always be somewhat different but I wouldn't necessarily claim one is superior to the other. Both have their practical uses.

I myself prefer to have absolute control over every single lighting parameter.

-Richard

Geddart: The bloom IS post. Maxwell doesn't support it in the current release yet but it is planned.

[BBullo]

Hey Rerender Is that dreamscape test file from Gancaldo one you can repost? I looked through that old thread and didn't see any Max file, but I would be very interested in seing an example on how to set up an exterior using Vray and dreamscape W/HDRI. If you can't repost maybe you could E-mail it?

Please Please Please

[samuel_bubat]

Hi there,

I think you can achive a similar effect with vray or other renderers as well. The "secret" is probabely photometric lighting. If you use a yellowish
direct with a multiplier of 1 it will never bounce enough light to make it a
believable sunlight situation.
(Look how strong the yellow sunlight is bounced and distributed in Richard´s picture)

I often use max IESSun in conjunction with
a environment light that has a multiplier value between 4 and 6. This
returns a quite realistic sunlight distribution. All you need is a good exposure control. And 1.46 now supports max logarithmic exp. that gives you interactive control of the lighting in your scene. (A great addition) !!

Well what you have to do by hand is setting the colors of the light and environment to realistic tones.
I´m quite busy at the moment but will post an example when i find some time !

edited: another advantage over hdri is that you have a similar light distribution but you have full control !

[RErender]

@BBullo - I did not have the scene just an hdri of the dreamscape sky

good point samuel, I have gotten some very nice results with that but dropped it because of the extra work.

It might be nice to have that maxwell scene to see how close we can get

[Da_elf]

http://www.elfpro3d.com/a.mpg

what can i say i was bored and all those greeble shots were messing with my mind hehe.,blame the quality on the mpg compresion. originally rendered at 720x......i forget

[ezrhythm]

My 20 minute attempt to join this topic...
You are right plastic_, "it always lacks something i can't really describe."

I had few previous renders slighly better than this, but i kept overwriting those.

[/b]

[RErender]

well for one, the sun should be behind you your set up looks like a toon shader, this is the best you can do?

[ezrhythm]

could do better, had spare 20 minutes...
maybe anyone could share some ideas to achieve maxwell's sky/sun light in reasonable time?