render uncertainty

[Volker Harun]

You could try to turn off the cast shadow in the fill lights.

[rcallicotte]

What I disproved is that the lights are not working correctly.  I did this by bypassing the two loaded heightfields (which I obviously wouldn't have) and hovering over the generated heightfield.  At about half a kilometer up, this is what I could render.  I'm not certain of the problem, but I'm certain it isn't the fill lights.

[rcallicotte]

Is it possible your atmosphere has been dabbled with beyond usefulness (just asking)?  The haze Horizon color and the bluesky Horizon colors have both been changed from the default.  I've found changing many things in the atmosphere is better accomplished one setting at a time and thoughtfully.  It's just a guess, but I'd look there first.

Also, your cloud quality should be at least 64, but I would use 128.

I need to leave.  Try different viewpoints as well as verifying that where the sun is shining actually is showing up in your environment.  I wonder if your loaded heightfields are just large enough to cast large shadows. 

[EmDee1]

Thanks Calico for your patience and quick answers; I'll look into your comments; meanwhile I tried Volker Haruns suggestion and that worked! Thanks to both of you for your kind help and replies...

[Matt]

I've noticed that there are some strange displacement problems in the power fractal "Basis grijsgroen", which I think is a problem with very small values for "smallest scale". This is a bug I will need to fix.

In your scene it is creating massive spikes that shoot into space. This bad displacement could also be the reason why the fill lights are casting shadows where you don't expect them to. I would disable the displacement in Basis grijsgroen or change the smallest scale to something larger, e.g. 0.1.

Matt

[EmDee1]

Thanks Matt, I scaled the displacement down to 0.1. When I turn on the cast shadows in the fill light now, it renders correctly now, not a gray (shadowed) landscape but one with the intended colors! Still it's not easy to find the right settings in the fill lights to come up with the right appearance. But I keep trying...
Working with the fill lights setup and reading around on the forums these days (Oshyan's fill lights, Moodflow's), I tend to think it's better at the moment to turn off GI anyhow. It won't be as easy as that I think, but anyway I see some advantages:
-a great (very great!) decrease in render times
-more possiblitities to adjust lightning
-with GI turned on, a small (and I mean real small ) change in camera point of view will change the lighting in the final render dramatically; even so: crop render with GI turned on differs a lot from the same part in a full render of the whole picture, etc. So GI off means more "render certainty", you know what you will get...
There must (?) be a loss when turning GI off I guess; shadows look much harder now I believe, but maybe that means more tweaking in the fill lights settings...(?) I have to practice a lot I guess, but
I believe it's worth it: never saw a render engine that could produce such picturesque and crispy renders...!

[rcallicotte]

Matt,

I mentioned this once before in the Support forums, though I think I had a couple of other issues with the TGD that I had caused, which may have masked this very same problem.  Once I changed my odd displacement value (among some fake stones), I got my light in the atmosphere back.

I've noticed that there are some strange displacement problems in the power fractal "Basis grijsgroen", which I think is a problem with very small values for "smallest scale". This is a bug I will need to fix.

In your scene it is creating massive spikes that shoot into space. This bad displacement could also be the reason why the fill lights are casting shadows where you don't expect them to. I would disable the displacement in Basis grijsgroen or change the smallest scale to something larger, e.g. 0.1.

Matt