Softening sun shadows and IBL/Environment DOF

[ENSLAVER]

I'm not sure if this is already possible so I am asking in the help section rather than requests =)


Is it possible to soften the sun's shadows to give more of an overcast/hazey appearance?

Is there a way to blur environments more. eg. A background environment's horizon is ~150km from the camera's focal point, but only receives as much blurring as an object ~10M away. Is there anyway to blur the environment more without decreasing F-Stop?

Thanks!

[zeitmeister]

Hell yeah, a background distance option would be great.
Perhaps it could increase render time and the need for computing more samples...

and again, the "object invisible to the camera"-option would help here:
One background picture for the IBL, invisible, 10m away for fast sampling, and one not casting GI with user defined distance for correct DOF blur.

Quite a few things to improve for creating more realism combined with render speed.

[ENSLAVER]

Hell yeah, a background distance option would be great.
Perhaps it could increase render time and the need for computing more samples...

and again, the "object invisible to the camera"-option would help here:
One background picture for the IBL, invisible, 10m away for fast sampling, and one not casting GI with user defined distance for correct DOF blur.

Quite a few things to improve for creating more realism combined with render speed.

Yeah, the amount of depth blur they currently receive is fine for indoor environments, but anything more than that and it's not realistic anymore.

As for the hazy sun, I figured I could paint a large soft sun area in HDRs. It works well for now.