Last Day of Summer - how to improve the rays?

[zhotfire]

This image is a few months old. I do like it the way it is, but a revisit had me thinking about how to make the rays stand out a bit more, just to make it more dramatic. Any ideas? What contributes to defined rays the most?

[bigben]

The light parts are from sunlight scattering from particles in the atmosphere...  atmospheric glow
The dark parts are from shadows of clouds and terrain ... denser clouds = darker shadows
For a silhouette the exposure is a little bright... increase sunlight strength and decrease camera exposure to match

[FrankB]

the other things that help, too, are:

- use a (slightly, like -0.2 or -0.3) negative value in the atmo's ambient lighting
- increase atmo density (4-8)

Combined with big ben's tips on increasing contrast it shall give you nice rays.

Frank

[dhavalmistry]

very nice!

[Mr_Lamppost]

Excellent work.

If you follow the suggestions given you will need to experiment with the atmospheric haze as well.

[Matt]

For a silhouette the exposure is a little bright... increase sunlight strength and decrease camera exposure to match

Increasing sunlight strength and decreasing camera exposure will cancel each other out. With GI, all light originates from the light sources, i.e. the sun, so its strength affects everything. Only additional lights or changes to ambient settings would change that relationship.

Matt