Sun (option suggestion)

[sjefen]

I would like to see a day/night cycle option for the sun. Maybe with a clock system. It would be very handy when doing animations.

If there is a easy way to do this I would like to know, but I still want to se a clock system if that is possible

- Terje

[Cyber-Angel]

I would welcome such a system if it where made to respect real time values and even time zones, in fact it would be nice if such a system could be made to respect the time and time zone of the system clock. Such a system would not only provide accurate sun position but accurate time of day shadows as well this could be especially useful for architectural rendering.

Regards to you.

Cyber-Angel       

[jaf]

Not sure if this is a good solution, but I use an astronomy  program called Starry Night, which cam give very accurate information concerning the position of the Sun from any Lat/Long, date and time.  I believe there's a way to print out a chart of the Sun positions between dates/times.  I'll have to check that.

I think there's some free planatarium software that may be able to give that information. 

[Oshyan]

Since there is no reference to the real Earth in the default scene, and Earth data is not included, an Earth-based positional time system doesn't necessarily make sense. Although I would agree the current system may not be the most intuitive, I'm not sure that this would be any better for the majority of scenes. After all, how do you know what time zone you're in and where the sun should be for where you are without terrain to reference? Improvements to sun positioning will be made regardless.

- Oshyan

[Matt]

Since there is no reference to the real Earth in the default scene, and Earth data is not included, an Earth-based positional time system doesn't necessarily make sense. Although I would agree the current system may not be the most intuitive, I'm not sure that this would be any better for the majority of scenes. After all, how do you know what time zone you're in and where the sun should be for where you are without terrain to reference? Improvements to sun positioning will be made regardless.

- Oshyan

It's true that TG's camera defaults to a position near the "north pole" of planet, but in theory TG could remap this to any latitude/longitude of the user's choosing (remapping either the camera or the origin to a particular lat/lon). The only unknown variable is North, but the user could choose that and/or it could default to pointing along the Z axis. From there the sun's elevation and heading could be calculated.

Having said that, we won't be able to implement this for the final 2.0 release. Latitude/longitude positioning is something we'd like to add to future versions, which will also open up the ability to georeference terrains, not just lighting.

Matt

[sjefen]

Thanks again Matt.

- Terje

[Oshyan]

Yes, it could be implemented that way as a convenience, but it really has nothing to do with the actual real-world which it references. It has the potential to be confusing, but I suppose it could also help. *shrug*

- Oshyan