After the midnight

[N-drju]

Hi all,

Can you tell me what color and haze settings atmo should have if you want to make a nice looking night or early evening sky? I've been playing with these recently but I'm afraid that I messed the settings up beyond belief. I'll post a picture in the afternoon.

Also it would be fun if you can share your ideas on how you make the moonlight in your scenes. In theory you can just add another light source behind the moon to create a glow but it won't do. What I mean is that the moon will cast gigantic shadow on your main planet (planets cannot be turned to translucent) so you'll get no shadows from trees for example.

[Dune]

Try a sun in front of your moon, but without the glow or the sun itself.

[bobbystahr]

For the moon object, put the light at exactly the same coords that the moon has, make twice as large as the moon, max it's strength and turn off cast shadows. That allows the light to radiate through the moon. I then put the sun at 0 and 90 vertical and dial it's strength back to 1 and turn off shadows for it as well. You will need t replace the tree object/pop with the default Sweet Birch, almost the same tree and find a map for the moon...mine didn't work today...I really must refine how I got it to work next time I do...save it as a .tgc next time I guess....

[bobbystahr]

Try a sun in front of your moon, but without the glow or the sun itself.

Uh..how would you do that Ulco?

[Dune]

I don't know actually....  speaking before thinking...

[N-drju]

Haha. That's good Ulco. Actually you can't do it in TG2 (maybe even not in TG3?) The sun appears to be always at a fixed distance. Putting the planet object beyond the sun light source (which is waaaaaay away) won't do any good as well as you won't have the effect of the crescent moon as you anticipate. Anyhow, here's the image so far:
[attach=1]
Bobbystahr, I couldn't open your file correctly. Are you a TG3 user already?

[bobbystahr]

Haha. That's good Ulco. Actually you can't do it in TG2 (maybe even not in TG3?) The sun appears to be always at a fixed distance. Putting the planet object beyond the sun light source (which is waaaaaay away) won't do any good as well as you won't have the effect of the crescent moon as you anticipate. Anyhow, here's the image so far:
[attach=1]
Bobbystahr, I couldn't open your file correctly. Are you a TG3 user already?

First off, nice render so far, would like to see it larger, and yes, the Free version. Even though I have the full 2, I am totally seduced by 3....

[bobbystahr]

No matter about versions, what I wrote is do-able in any TG version except Classic...

[bobbystahr]

Well it does open in TG2 just minus the population and terrain . I just copied what TG3 does for the default terrain and added a new pop with the birch from the XFROG free veg.

[Dune]

Nice render N-drju (is that Andrew?). What you need for real moonlit scene is less color in the grass and trees. And I would add more grasses, so the bare ground is covered.

[N-drju]

Yes, that's my native language sound cognate of "Andrew."

I can promise you only two things. First, the image will be bigger. The final will be around 1400x1050. Second, I'll use your TG2 converted Parkwood grass Ulco to fill the blank spaces. In this pic I really messed the atmo colors to astronomical (literally) levels so that's probably why it looks too bright. I might also reduce the lamplight intensity.

A user (name of whom I'll disclose later in the credits ) offered me some help with the moon as well so I guess I can get the sky back on track one way or the other.

[N-drju]

Boy... I just realized how simple it is to create moon glow!

I can just add a very high atmo to the second moon planet, put a sun light source behind both and the atmosphere of the moon will do the glow effect!

Too late for that however as I'm already rendering.