Is it possible to make something (perhaps a plane) block the sun? as in, say the render is looking up at the atmo/clouds and I want half of it to not receive sunlight and the other half do, with the sunlight being about elevation 3. any way to create something ( perhaps a plane) that is in the middle of the atmo and cast shadows on half the atmo/clouds and yet remain invisible to the render camera? or am I thinking of going about this the wrong way?
You can certainly create an object to block out some light as you say. Doing that while simultaneously making it invisible is the hard part. I'm not a fan of Terragen's native plane object. It's options are incredibly unwieldy. You're better off making a flat surface in another program and then importing it in. This will give you better control of your object.
Just did a quick test and it doesn't look like a panel like that can cast a shadow and have 0 opacity. But if you place your plane beyond your atmosphere and clouds and perhaps make it black, you could probably pull it off.
You can view my thread here for more information. http://www.planetside.co.uk/forums/index.php?topic=14861.0
Although my challenge was creating a plane that is seen, yet with independent lighting. And you want the opposite.
That's what I was afraid of. : /
Just uncheck "visible to camera" and it won't be visible in your render yet it will still block the sun or in other words cast shadows.
Quote from: Tangled-Universe on September 04, 2012, 01:32:03 PM
Just uncheck "visible to camera" and it won't be visible in your render yet it will still block the sun or in other words cast shadows.
Problem is... I don't what what else to do, I have one in position, have visible to camera unchecked, and can't figure out what next to do. lol i've played around with the opacity to no avail... not sure what I'm doing wrong. do I need some kind of surface shader?
I don't get it...?
There's nothing more to do I'd say. Put the plane in the right position until you like the way it is blocking the light and then uncheck visible to camera. That's it.
As long as "cast shadows" is enabled it will exactly do what you're expecting.
Be aware that you may need to enable "recieve shadows from surfaces" in the atmosphere node to have the blocking calculated accurately.
That's what I was missing, lol. thanks! :D
EDIT: I'll get the share tomorrow of what I made with this. :D
Here's my thing. different POV soon.