I was going over my old projects and I came across my sunset eclipse one, after playing around for about 8 seconds I decide to turn soft shadows on in the sunlight node, well what was once a rich red atmosphere suddenly turned into an overbright bliss scene, looks nice but not what it's supposed to be. I've posted both TGD's. Might be fixed already but just thought I'd bring it up.
Also the one with soft shadows just crashed when it finished rendering the render preview.
Enabling soft shadow is going to make a dramatic difference to any scene where the shadow-casting object is far from the receiving surface. An eclipse is an extreme example, creating very large penumbra. With soft shadows the lighting is more realistic, but if you have set up a scene without soft shadows and then enabled soft shadows you will get light where you might not expect it.
Matt
Thanks Matt, Would there be any way (perhaps with the SDK), to simulate wavelenth-dependant parameters of of scattering in atmospheric particles? I don't know if TG2 goes into the details of single scattering albedo but I reckon if it could be done with the SDK then it'd really help to design the effects that intercelestial phenomena give us. Might even be able to fake it with Rayleigh scattering
Sounds like a cool project but necessarily low priority. I'm not sure if such a thing could be done via the SDK, but I do hope there will be reasonable access to the renderer internals for it. It will still be some time off though unfortunately.
- Oshyan
Yeah, Rayliegh scattering is evident in TG2 already but whether this is just a product of the atmospheric conditions provided elsewhere or if it was originally intended I don't know. It's noticable in the first TGD with the low scattering albedo on the right and the gradient to the left from the second planet. The sunlight is being diffusely distributed by the secondary planet into the atmosphere of the first planet but because of the position of the sun it's allowing far more light to be scattered to the left so the right is in darkness. I need something that can redistribute the scattered light to the right. I've just downloaded the update but I'm just gonna try using multiple suns to create the same effect of the first sun all the way round the other side :D I do love to cheat