City life

[Hannes]

I wanted to use some stuff from my last image. https://planetside.co.uk/forums/index.php/topic,28356.0.html

No Star Wars ship this time, but a lot of stuff more:
A total of 32 populations and 56 objects. I counted them just out of curiosity. TG takes some time to load the files, but once it's there, TG has no problems. I love it!

Some interesting lighting fact: when the path tracer was new, I was complaining, that you can't increase the power of the environment light to make the scene a bit brighter. I hate second suns, when you're not in a two suns solar system. To my eyes it doesn't look natural. So upping the exposure is one possible thing to do, but often it washes out the sky. So what else can be done?

Here in this case I used a huge hollow hemisphere as backdrop (with "cast shadows" disabled), and also as a lighting source. The luminosity of the sphere is set to 2 (as far as I remember). This lighting affects the GI in a very natural way, other than second suns with shadows disabled or such stuff.
So I can easily increase the luminosity and have the same effect like increasing the environmental light in the legacy renderer. If I make the hemisphere invisible, I have the original sky plus a brightened up scene.

[Dune]

Topnotch work! I love it! I really like the astronaut too
But apparently the hemisphere trick doesn't affect the sky, no bleaching of clouds? Or is it very small (which is relative) and low, far under the sky?

[Hannes]

Actually there are no clouds in the scene. What you see is the textured hemisphere. Makes life easier in this case.
I haven't tested the hemisphere in combination with real clouds, so I'll see...

[Dune]

Ah, I should have known, as I have done the same in a recent render

[sboerner]

Only 56 objects? Incredible. Agree that the astronaut is a nice touch.  And the jaywalker confirms that this is indeed NYC.

No atmosphere? This setup certainly must reduce the rendering time.

[Hannes]

Thanks Steve!! I had to look, what a jaywalker is...
Actually I didn't disable the default atmosphere. There are just no clouds.

Rendertime in 3K was 2 hours. Path tracer enabled. I think, that's not too bad.

[Hannes]

By the way, this is the model I used:
https://www.cgtrader.com/free-3d-models/exterior/cityscape/nyc-block-set-8-f61d6947467ccd3aa5af24db320235dd

Years ago I edited the textures a lot, and for this image I created a poulation of this city block. I had to edit and rotate some of the instances, so that there are no identical fassades at least in the foreground.

[WAS]

Way cool. I like the lighting too, but I thought enviro light works fine? I used it on my gas giant in PT to get luminosity to light the rings (clouds set to enviro 10). The issue is it doesn't know what to do with that light and you can see circles of more light and circles of less on the rings. In my derelict PT scene enviro is upped in enviro light node to get very bright sand in the sun, while still being nice and visible in shadow.

[Kadri]

Looks good.

[Jo Kariboo]

A great set up again! Beatifull render!

[WAS]

Lara Croft has a sweet ride, haha

[Hannes]

...but I thought enviro light works fine?

Yes, it does. I only disabled the sunlight. But the enviro light needs some light source to do something, and in this case it's the selfilluminating hemisphere.

[Hannes]

Another version. Once again the scene is only lit by the hemisphere.

[DocCharly65]

Marvelous work! Both of them. Big Like!

[Dune]

So good!