Lighting in lower sun conditions..... any ideas ???

[pclavett]

Hi guys ! The pandemic is making playing with Terragen a must...... at least to stay sane ! I have been playing over the past weeks and always seem to have issues with lighting the textures and vegetation in low light conditions, such as in high shadow areas (with significant cloud coverage or setting sun). When I do not have significant sun hitting the vegetation, it seem to take on a bland monotone texture. I have tried to use combinations of GI and AO and even went so far as to put in an opposite sun with no atmo lighting and no shadows..... but it never seems to come out just right ! It seems that some of you are able to get it just right from the look of some of the gallery on the Terragen website. Maybe some translucency to the vegetation might help but have not tried that. I am including the image done and would appreciate any comments or suggestions ! The image has a GI of 1.7, AO of 0.7 and an opposite very weak sun of 0.25 strength....... all this does not seem to bring out the foreground as it should even with the setting sun. Maybe I am seeing issues that are not really a problem but when comparing to some other amazing examples in the gallery..... I feel that there is something missing. BTW, there is no post-work adjustments in Photoshop..... maybe there is a need for this to make things pop out ? Thank you for your help ! Paul

[Nala1977]

there is something really wrong with this render for sure, there are no shadows, the tree trunks do not project any shadows on the ground, a sun like that should have a solid shadow, its like the whole trees are backlit, i dont know if you are using opacity in a wrong way, or subsurface, or everything is transparent, but that is not how it should look

check the transparency/opacity settings in the foliage tree shader, remove any transparency or subsurface

[WAS]

Well the Standard Renderer may be the first problem when comparing to the PS gallery. Those are all pretty much PT for forests and stuff no?

Translucency may be part of the issue, but I notice on the ground too, that there are very faint shadows. It seems environment light is killing your shadowy areas.

Additionally, textures on the ground are from image, or PF, without corresponding displacement following it's texture, will produce flat looking texturing, and I think that'll be accentuated in low light like this.

[WAS]

Did a few tests and I can't reproduce this with standard TG settings so I feel lighting was changed somehow. Maybe stronger light on surfaces drowning out shadows where some surface light is.

Shadow is soft here, because of the low light, but is definable, and GISD works well at their boundaries to the objects. And the foliage looks decent enough without tweaks.