Does a very realistic mid day scene requires multiple sun lamps?

I usually go with my template, a sun lamp (7mm) with a yellowish hue, a background lighting with clouds with light blue hue, usually a skydome.

The example scene bellow use the template above


The light in the real world does not just come from a single light source so it’s not unexpected that is you would need more than one light source to simulate it

You could use a HDRi image to simulate those multiple lights instead of using lamps

Yeah the hdri images. I forgot those.

Multiple sun lamps is still a viable option in scenes. Blues and yellows in different directions. Course watch your shadows and strength values.

Also try the Sky texture in the world material.

Mix of sun, sky (world settings, can also split mix with lightpath camera to separate lighting from visible sky), bounce light if needed (area lights, tinted slightly to ground color), and blackbody for daylight is something like 6250°K. (At least I find it looks good.)

I tried those above and here is a render of a scene from my movie:


I used a orange sun lamp, blue tinted hemi lamp and a sky material for the background. Ambient Occlusion is turned off.

It doesn’t look like a mid day scene, more like a late afternoon one. But if you used an orange sun lamp, you were already going for that effect, didn’t you? :wink:

My ‘immediate gut-instinct reaction’ to post #7 is that the shadows are too strong, and that the protagonist’s head merges right into the window behind him. Like it or not, my eye "zi-i-p-p-p!!"s straight to his head-shadow on the wall!

Furthermore: a majority(!) of the screen-space in this shot does not include either the protagonist or the person he is talking to! “Therefore, why not?!”

“Crop! Crop! Crop! Get closer!” :cool:

If the story, at any particular moment in time, does not involve “the setting that they are in,” then, as a rule of thumb, “do not give the audience anything else to look at.”

The outdoor ‘world’ in sunlight has only 1 ‘sun’ lamp, all you have to do is make sure it’s got the correct hardness of shadow (by sun size), and ensure it’s colour is set to match the suns, if it is our sun your trying to render :slight_smile:

The part you still haven’t got is the correct ‘sky/world’ light. A blue hemi isn’t really the answer, have you tried a sky HDRi? Probably a midday one, you will have to match the light strength properly.
Otherwise, as said before use the Sky world texture. Use that instead of a blue hemi.

Good advises. I decided to continue this scene. So I will need to use the Sky Texture (world background), use an Area Light, point it upwards and give it a slight brown color. Set the sun lamp to bright yellow and set the strength to 3.300 and size to 10cm for late aternoon

Why do you need an arealamp pointing up? If you’re using multiple bounces in a scene, then the ground should take care of any lighting that might be coming from underneath.

Also, a midday scene should have just a slight yellow for the sunlight (you don’t really see a yellow tinge on outdoor surfaces during the day).

Oops I’ll remove the upward lamp and yes I know a 12 noon scene sun color is RGB .800 .800 .600 and a late afternoon scene is orange. That is a late afternoon scene.