Direction-based coloring for planetary views

[itsdavidblaker]

Hello!

Just a thought I've had, let's assume the camera is really damn high, high enough for scattered trees to not be an option

Is there a way for the colour of the forest-filled continents to have their luminance ever so slightly affected by the ray's direction in relation to the sun?

The motivation behind this is to simulate and approximate the overall shadowing that viewing trees from behind will produce, and the overall brightness that will be seen when looking away from the sun. This is hard for me to replicate since surfaces are flat at such large scales and so the brightness is uniform  




 A similar principle could apply to rocky landscapes or anything covered in minuscule rocks/dust/pebbles that produce shadows. some nice examples include:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opposition_surge




Open to thoughts!

[Dune]

Try experimenting with the 'distort by normal' in a PF that has some 'treelike' displacement. That's one of the variables that has an influence on ground color related to, well... normals, and is very simple to use. Another option would be use a slight reflection (non-RT), but that's hard in path trace mode, as it's ray/path-traced then (so slower).