Preview OK, render too dark

[AndyWelder]

What the flying lizards is happening here!?
In the preview there are nice spots with sunlight on the terrain and "lively colored" clouds but these are gone in the render; all the terrain looks like it's in the shadows and the clouds are simply lighter colored patches.
I know I don't have total control over what's happening in TG2 (I'm simply pushin' faders you might say) so I replaced the cloud/atmosphere/lightsource shaders with default ones several time but to no avail. I also tried a different terrain but still no joy.
Something I'm missing? (very well possible, you know)

[rcallicotte]

I've seen this discrepancy where the preview actually shows light better and therefore looks better than the actual render.

[dhavalmistry]

yes I have seen this happen before too...but I dont remember what the solution was.....sorry

[choronr]

You didn't say if you used 'Quick' render; or, 'Full' render for your final. I once used to always use the Quick render to complete my scenes. I ran into the same thing you did; so, I tried the Full render and the scene turned out perfectly. I think sometimes we make changes in the render settings that we forget about. I would suggest you try one or the other with the default settings to see if this is the remedy.

Bob

[Oshyan]

That looks like a very nice scene. Although there can be differences between the preview and final render due to detail levels, in your image it looks like the lighting is actually totally different. It's difficult to say what might be happening without having a project file to look at, but my guess would be you may have turned off some important setting in the renderer, for example raytraced shadows. You can try switching renderers or create a new renderer and hook it up to your camera - it will have default settings and you can then be sure it's nothing you have changed.

- Oshyan