Transitional

[bobbystahr]

Lovely and subtle but I do agree about the darkness. On your monitor can you see much detail in the shadow?

To get holes in the clouds exactly where you want them so you gget light on the parts of the scene you want and the possibility of light rays use a Simple shape shader plugged into a Fractal warp shader plugged into the cloud density Fractal's Mask by shader input.

Richard...could you maybe post a simple clip of this...I can't seem to suss it out and it's something I've been trying to do for ages...thanks.

[bobbystahr]

and point that image map shader mask at the sun from the spot you want your light on, by a camera.

Just how would you do that Dune? point an image map shader at is the point I'm flummoxed on....

[cyphyr]

Richard...could you maybe post a simple clip of this...I can't seem to suss it out and it's something I've been trying to do for ages...thanks.

Here you go Bobby
http://www.planetside.co.uk/forums/index.php/topic,18788.new.html#new

[bobbystahr]

Richard...could you maybe post a simple clip of this...I can't seem to suss it out and it's something I've been trying to do for ages...thanks.

Here you go Bobby
http://www.planetside.co.uk/forums/index.php/topic,18788.new.html#new

Thanks, was monitoring my inbox and noticed that link come up....

[Cocateho]

Thanks all for the tips and feedback, a lot of ideas floating around on how to tweak the image. This may end up being a long WIP as it seems like a good project to get a bit perfectionist with. I'm definitely going to try to incorporate as many suggestions as I can and see what I can do!

[Cocateho]

The darkness of the image is a bit much, but the piece's title is "transitional"; a sort of a foggy 'gloaming', so maybe the subtle dark tones are intended to set the mood. Perhaps a different compositional approach to create a 'center' or some line for the eye to follow would add some interest.  Cyphr's tip on a positional light beam is a great suggestion (thanks for the that from me as well!). You're doing some nice work, looking forward to more.

Thank you. The darkness is intentional to a degree but not so much as to remove too much detail. @ Cyphyr I can see a good bit of detail on my monitor but I will definitely play around with lighting to see if I might could achieve a little more shadow detail while still keeping it dark.

[bobbystahr]

The darkness of the image is a bit much, but the piece's title is "transitional"; a sort of a foggy 'gloaming', so maybe the subtle dark tones are intended to set the mood. Perhaps a different compositional approach to create a 'center' or some line for the eye to follow would add some interest.  Cyphr's tip on a positional light beam is a great suggestion (thanks for the that from me as well!). You're doing some nice work, looking forward to more.

Thank you. The darkness is intentional to a degree but not so much as to remove too much detail. @ Cyphyr I can see a good bit of detail on my monitor but I will definitely play around with lighting to see if I might could achieve a little more shadow detail while still keeping it dark.

Enabling Ambient Occlusion in the GI tab and trying some low settings, (2-5) may help with details in shadow.

[cyphyr]

Never be afraid to mess with stuff in post. If you have Pro or Animation you have access to all the render layers. If you don't you can always use several renders with GI and AI and other lighting solutions. Load the various layers into Photoshop (or whatever paint package you use) and play with layering the renders over each other.