Hi guys, In the help files for Maxingo it says:

On page 10

"The Sky is modelled on a northern hemisphere sky. Pick a TARGET LIGHT to use to set the direction of the sun.

My question is, What happens if there are not target lights on the scene. Will there still be a "Sun" ? If so, how do you control it possition?

Hi,
Target light is the only way to control the sun.
What do you mean there is no target light in the scene? Just add one.

You can get the sun to show up also without having a target light by just enabling the Sky system under Maxigo>Environment. But then the sun will be in it's default position and you can't control it.

This "default" possition is something programed at the "factory" correct?
Does it represent a specific time? I noticed that is shines into the spaces from the "south" or bottom of the scene.

If would be very helpful to know if the default possition corresponds to any particular time or such. (as general knowlege)

Well..the default sun position is random.
It doesn't represent a specific time or such.
It's just some random location I used when I was programming Maxigo.

I see, great thank you for your active response. I will download the Sketchup plug-in but I wonder if the same applies?

SkIndigo doesn't use a target light for the sun direction, it uses SketchUp's Shadow system to direct the sun.

Thanks

I noticed my renders are showing a sky. I there a way to get black or white backdrop for easy compositing or just for the sake of having a white of black backdrop?

The trick is that I still need eviroment lighting and sun.

The possibility to combine Sun Light + EnvMap is planned somewhere in the future afaik.
Until then you have the possibility to simply paint/brighten-up the sun into your EnvMap. This works quite good, but needs a little bit of testing until you get the brightness you want. this also works nicely with Exit Portals...

Otherwise this tutorial might help: viewtopic.php?f=19&t=5088

You could render out an alpha and use it when compositing.

The alpha shouldn't take the long to "cook" correct?

yes, it should be fast!
But afaik there is a bug atm, that some materials mess around with the alpha rendering... if it does, simply try to delete them for this pass and undo after success.

thanks ill give it a shot

Use the 'clay render' method to get around the alpha render bug

can you please elaborate? I know what a clay render is, but what so you mean the clay render method?