Fog and Rain on the Midlands

Started by Upon Infinity, May 02, 2015, 06:06:36 PM

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Upon Infinity

The results for the overnight version.  It's different.  I don't know if it's better or not. Also, I put the shadows back in for this one.  Gonna try your little trick for the next.

bobbystahr

Quote from: Dune on May 04, 2015, 12:01:54 PM
I think I showed it before, quite a while ago, but here's the principle. You need to make a black square with a white patch, can be quite small of course.

Indeed you did Ulco, I totally recognise that, I just never saved the image. Thanks for indulging the old pensioner...heh heh heh
something borrowed,
something Blue.
Ring out the Old.
Bring in the New
Bobby Stahr, Paracosmologist

Upon Infinity

Tried Ulco's little trick.  Couldn't get it to work.  Must be another check box or something I'm missing.

bobbystahr

Quote from: Upon Infinity on May 04, 2015, 04:14:41 PM
Tried Ulco's little trick.  Couldn't get it to work.  Must be another check box or something I'm missing.

Have you got the projection camera on the ground where you want the light to happen and pointed at the sky area where you want the light coming from?
something borrowed,
something Blue.
Ring out the Old.
Bring in the New
Bobby Stahr, Paracosmologist

Upon Infinity

Yep.  I tried it in 2 different scenes.  This is the default one.  Logically, it should work but I don't understand how terragen masks with black / white images.

bobbystahr

Quote from: Upon Infinity on May 04, 2015, 04:14:41 PM
Tried Ulco's little trick.  Couldn't get it to work.  Must be another check box or something I'm missing.

Hadn't tried it last post...seems I'm missing that certain something as well..  ...
something borrowed,
something Blue.
Ring out the Old.
Bring in the New
Bobby Stahr, Paracosmologist

bobbystahr

something borrowed,
something Blue.
Ring out the Old.
Bring in the New
Bobby Stahr, Paracosmologist

Dune

Maybe the FOV is too small? Or you should try a harder dot... or harden it through color adjust. Angle needs to quite exactly like the sun's. You can test whether it's working by setting it to repeat; blowing lots of holes in the clouds. Richard's trick is harder as you need to get the simple shape exactly under the sun. I tried using a rotated simple shape, but failed to get it working. A bit strange, as the fumarole rotation of a simple shape worked. Life is complicated  ???

Upon Infinity

Tried a harder dot.  Tried a wider FOV.  Definitely doesn't work with default values.  I'm missing either another shader or a checkbox or something.  These are the kind of standard operations PS needs to make a lot easier to perform.

Tangled-Universe

"Digging" a hole in the cloud layer is a great suggestion by Ulco. I do that too sometimes and it takes a bit of fiddling to get the hole in the right position. This is how I usually do it:

1) create a new camera and have it look down on your landscape from great altitude
2) disconnect the current density shader of the cloud layer and
3) replace it with a distribution shader
4) create a simple shape shader (texture position) of a soft circle, set size to the size of the hole, like 500x500 meters for starters.
5) use the simple shape shader as blend shader and choose to invert it.

Now there are 2 ways to find the spot of where to put the hole in the cloud layer. Do it by math (sun angle etc.) or by eye/fiddling.
Math is mystery to me, so I choose the fiddling :)

6) From your new camera high up right-click in the terrain where the sun needs to shine directly on the surface and righ-click to choose "copy coordinates"
7) paste the coordinates in the simple shape shader
8) re-render preview and see that hole in cloud is away from that position, as the sun has an angle and direction.
The lower the angle the further it's off.
9) move the simple shape shader in the direction of the sun's direction
10) if the hole isn't well visible then set cloud density and edge sharpness to 1 and make the simple shape shader hard-edged.
11) Once you have pin-pointed the coordinates then re-connect the density shader for your clouds and don't forget to change back your cloud density and edge sharpness settings if you did change those.
12) Use the simple shape shader as blend-shader for your cloud density shader.
13) If the hole is too harsh then make the shape softer
14) If you like some variation, instead of a clean clear hole (omg, ambiguous talke here), then reduce the white of the simple shape to a grey value, like 50% grey.

A lot of steps, but actually not so much work!

You can also do this in an empty scene to make it easier.
Then copy/paste the sun from your project into the empty scene and repeat the process.
Instead, then try to make the sun shine directly at the origin 0,0,0 and measure how far the simple shape shader deviates from those coordinates.
Use those values to add/subtract them from the coordinates you measured in the 3D preview from your project file.

Tangled-Universe

Btw...to control direct/indirect light etc. etc. it might be a lot easier to export your render into render elements and combine those in Photoshop into a final render.
You can then change the components which make up a render separately, which is quite powerful.
No need to re-render if you need stronger GI on surfaces. Just increase the exposure of the indirect lighting on surfaces pass and you will have the same result, for free!

Dune

You did use another camera? Well, here's a quick setup. You have to load again, can't upload a tif.

Upon Infinity

Looks like I was missing the colour adjust shader.  What does that one do?

Anyway, it works.  So, thanks!

Dune

Good that it works. Color adjust is just to harden the color; more white if needed.

bobbystahr

something borrowed,
something Blue.
Ring out the Old.
Bring in the New
Bobby Stahr, Paracosmologist