Physical sky without sun

[neepneep]

This is similar to what the Kramster mentioned , but what if you:

1. Render a mirrorball in an empty sun+sky scene (http://www.indigorenderer.com/joomla/fo ... hp?p=27814 - images are dead ) and then edit the resulting environment map in photoshop to remove the sun.

2. Next render the same scene without the mirror ball.

3. Render your scene using the envmap from #1

4. Render your scene again, with alpha map enabled.

5. Composite #4 on top of #2

[lrsuser]

kind of side tracking...
but how do you render alpha channel render using Skindigo/Indigo.

[Whaat]

kind of side tracking...
but how do you render alpha channel render using Skindigo/Indigo.

- get Indigo 1.0.6
- delete 'indigo_1_0_5_path.txt' file located in your Sketchup/plugins directory
- run SU
- locate 'indigo.exe' for version 1.0.6 when prompted
- go to 'Advanced' in Render Settings dialog
- click 'open inifile.txt'
- change bottom line to "render_foreground_alpha" "true" and then save the text file
- now render as usual (first turn bidirectional off, it doesn't work with alpha at the moment)

[lrsuser]

ah thanks!..i'll try it out

[ZYX]

Well I guess I'm trying to get the opposite, when i use environment maps (lat_long) i notice that there are almost no hard shadows, but what can i do if I want hard shadows in the render? Is it possible to get hard shadows in indigo using environment maps?

[Zom-B]

Yes it is, simply by using some extra light sources => Mesh Emitters.
To get a hard shadow, the lightsource needs to be far away and small...
But its hard to get your meshlight - env_map light power tweaked a way, that both sources are visible... try a blackBody emitter and reduce the gain...

[kwistenbiebel]

Having the ability to render sky without direct sun is no luxury for architectural rendering.

In Fry render you can mix the sky/sun ratio as layers (much like Maxwells multilight but Maxwell has no sun/sky seperation).

In that way, the sun strength can be controlled seperately from sky intensity, a thing that is now lacking in Indigo unfortunately.

So my vote +1 for this feature.

[Pibuz]

@ kwisten

Yes, in Maxwell's mxi system there's no sky/sun separation, but you can render a physical sky without sun unchecking the sun option in the sky/sun system. I've seen it's useful for example in indoor shots, when calculating a direct lighting for a north-orientated room is useless.