Quote from: cyphyr on July 14, 2007, 11:28:41 PM
One thing has been puzzling me is the orange highlight of the suns reflection. the reflection from the sea is orange but the clouds are white apart from their forward facing highlights. The only way I can see of doing that (in TG2) at the moment is to make the light source orange but that will change the colour of everything. Is there anyway to modify the colour of a highlight or reflection independently of the light source?
That's because the clouds are at a higher altitude than the sea. The sunlight that reaches the sea has travelled through more atmosphere and so is more red due to the way the atmosphere scatters light. It is even more pronounced because the light from the sea has to come back through the atmosphere before reaching the camera, so it is reddened even further. The same thing happens to the clouds but because they are higher in the atmosphere the sun needs to be much closer to the horizon to achieve the same degree of reddening.
Not only that, the clouds are lit by both sunlight and other light coming from all directions (mostly from the surrounding sky), whereas the highlight on the sea is a concentrated reflection of only the sunlight.
TG2's atmosphere should be able to simulate this effect without resort to any special tricks. The most difficult part is to create realistic cloud shapes.
Matt