I havent seen any night shots in the gallery so i converted one industrial scene i have using the scripts in the forum from Vray.
Pretty much out of the box settings on corona, one hdri in environmental slot and a couple of mesh emitters on the lamps.
19 hours so far.
The hdri shows as some small brigth dots on the back. Some kind of bug?. I lower the hdri to 0.01 (from 1 as default) to mimic night illumination from sky.
You were right… deleted the sky dome mesh and put the hdri in the environment slot. Much better, however not quite there yet.
I’m gonna try the sun model from corona. Also replace the mesh emitters for sphere lights.
It is possible for sun model from corona can mimic night? (If i put an adecuate angle greater than 90 degree?). Could be a good addition.
If you’re not going for dusk, but for night, then you don’t need any map in enviroment at all. Just solid pure black color. Starlight is so extremely dim, that it’s not worth to calculate. You can put any map you like, in visibility override, though.
As for moon, you can use corona sky or daylight system, it doesn’t matter really. But in case you choose latter, don’t forget to change mrsun to corona sun and turn off mrsky completely. And lastly, dial down intensity of sun (moon) significantly, like hundreds or even thousands times.
Now, all is that left, is to add artificial lighting.
The moon ligth isnt blueish as i tough has a temprature of 4100-4150 a rather yelowish tone. And thanks to this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purkinje_effect we perceive as blueish. So i put the Corona sun as 4150 Kelvin Temp.
I-m lost respect the size of the moon respect of the size of Corona Sky but as i intend to apply photoshop on the disc i leave as 5 for now.
I never knew that where a setting like bitmap paging in max and by default where active. If you wish to wait for your renders forever leave this on. See this as reference http://jokermartini.com/2013/11/14/render-speed-increase/.Thanks to suggest that.
Using a default Corona material override, in post settings in corona use 4150 as white balance as the predominant ligth source was the moon. Giving me a yelowish tone. But just as stated before our eyes shift that illumination to blue so i try a value of 3150 to return to that blueish color.
I try an spherical star map as suggested in the forum but it turns out that the stars renders too big and unnatural.
This is the link for that realistic position and brigthness star field http://paulbourke.net/miscellaneous/starfield/
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IMAGE 4150ML-4150WB 4150 kelvin sun, 4150K White balance in postprocessing tab
IMAGE 4150ML-3150WB 4150 kelvin sun, 3150K White balance in postprocessing tab to mimic blueish tint from human eye
IMAGE 4150ML-3150WB/3000TL 4150 kelvin sun, 3150K White balance in postprocessing tab, corona ligth 3000 K Tungsten ligth , corona ligth sphere
IMAGE STARFIELD just a render whit spherical star map from http://paulbourke.net/miscellaneous/starfield/