Night time scene

[madcoo]

Hi guys!


Highly interesting thread to me !

I've been using Blender for quite a while, but I recently discovered Sketchup, and I might switch to SU, as I've realised modelling architecture in Blender takes a lot more time (to me) than in SU.

Well... I've got a question:

In Blender, you can position the sun where you want in your scene, but it doesn't appear to be the case in SU.
=> does it mean that you have to rotate your model in SU to position the sun correctly in your scene?

Here's an example:
- Let's imagine you have modelled a house using the default X/Y/Z axes' position.
- You set up your daytime (I don't know where you do this, but I'll have a look).
- If you want your sun to be, let's say, on the left-hand side of your model, what do you do? Do you have to rotate your model entirely? Or is there a way to position the sun?

(Thinking about it, it would actually sound like a more "realistic" approach to rotate the model and not the sky : in real life Earth and everything that's on it turns around the sun... )

Many thanks in advance for your help !

[neo0.]

I've never been able to achieve the sunset effect with skindigo.. Possibly because indigo lacks atmospheric scattering hehe It would be cool if indigo let you control all the paramters of the atmosphere...


But to answer your question, yeah, you can set the sun position, but it takes some getting used to. You can use the "set sun position" tool (under options.) What I don't like is how you don't have adaquete control over it's position. It feels like you are really choosing it's location in 2D space because you can't specify the third dimension... In other words, you can choose, x and y, but not z... When you make a decision about where you want you sun to go, it is also kind of hard to determine whether sketchup's inference engine "read your mind" correctly and put your sun in the place you wanted it to go.. Some kind of visual representation of the sun's position would be great.

[madcoo]

Thanks for theses useful pieces of information, Neo0 !

I'll try to set the sun position according to the X/Y position as you told me.

I had a look on the internet and I found how to set the sun's daytime position.

Thanks again, see ya !

[anesthetized]

madcoo,

could you give me a link to this information about seting sun/ day time in SU. It is very hard for me to figure it out.
I remember it was very easy in artlantis studio ( you were able to set the place on earth where the model is lokadet, hour and even the year period... it weas very useful. too bad there is no option like this in indigo)

[StompinTom]

(Thinking about it, it would actually sound like a more "realistic" approach to rotate the model and not the sky : in real life Earth and everything that's on it turns around the sun... )

That's only realistic with a pre-relativistic model of the Universe. It doesn't matter at all whether the sky rotates or the model does, it just depends on your point of reference. IMO it would make a lot more sense to use the model as the reference point, in which case you could rotate the sky and ESPECIALLY environment map around the model as you see fit. Right now I have to offset my HDR maps in Photoshop by a certain percentage to get the light coming from the direction I want it to which makes it a bitch to do quickly. I know this is the SketchUp section, but I would still maintain that having an option of rotating whatever environment you choose be possible through any exporter.

[wojtek-w]

could you give me a link to this information about seting sun/ day time in SU. It is very hard for me to figure it out.
I remember it was very easy in artlantis studio ( you were able to set the place on earth where the model is lokadet, hour and even the year period... it weas very useful. too bad there is no option like this in indigo)

Hey, in Sketchup it's also very easy:
from main menu Widow>Model Info>Location You can find all countries and their biggest cities, there's option to set a custom location. In the same window You can set north angle (You input desired value or show in the model)
Then again from the main menu Window>Shadows You can set exact day and time and set up the way SU displays shadows.
I hope it helped.
good luck

[Bosseye]

I had a similar problem, but with some input from a few guys on here I found a good way to do evening style scenes is to change the background colour in sketchup to something like a deep blue and uncheck the sky tick box in the same setting dialogue.

Then in Indigo render settings switch environment from sun and sky to sketchup background colour and voila, everything takes on a nice blue tinge (or whatever colour you've set the background to be)

[FiveAG]

I think jeff's idea can take some work.
In real world , a lot of TV makers use a more darker color filter glass covering before camera in daytime to get a night result!!but,the shadow always looks more fake. and the moon. and if you want to add a road lamp ,it will not work !!

[FiveAG]

I find a good way to create night view.
put a screen out side of the window,and assign a night view picture to it.And the next step which is the important is to set its emission to sketchup and add its power(that means to light it).
And don't forget to set the environment to Black.
you'll get such result:

Through this idea,you can get a lot of different sunset time and night result:

[galinette]

Why not using some cool sunset envmaps?

You may find nice ones on the web, like on this one (link suggested by Enslaver) : http://www.openfootage.net/?cat=15. If you want more "red sunlight" effect you can edit them in photoshop and tint the image or the sun region to something red-orange.

Also, making your own HDRI envmap from a 360° set of pictures is some work, but really feasible with some training.

Making a physically correct HDR envmap with a bright daytime sun is very difficult with standard cameras (even at lowest ISO, shutter and aperture, sun is still burned and you have huge diffraction).
But doing a sunset, nighttime or cloudy envmap is quite easy with a tripod, a consumer camera, a good stitch software (PTgui rules) and some practice. And the results are awesome.

Etienne

[FiveAG]

That website gets no night scene photo.
Do you get other good ones?
By the way, I encounter a problem when I load a lat/long HDR Picture which I downloaded from internet as Env.map which indigo shows me that map file cannot load.
How to resolve this problem?

[galinette]

Just go to page 2! There is one : "HDRI 360 lago di garda hotel view"

http://www.openfootage.net/?cat=15&paged=2

The other one I know are not free, but I'll search for some free sunset envmaps. If I meet a nice sunset with my 360° picture gear one day, I'll do one...

Etienne

[FiveAG]

Thanks a lot firstly

[FiveAG]

By the way, the picture in that site shows the shadows of objects,How to make it in indigo.

[dag]

Lots of envmaps at http://www.cgtextures.com/

To get shadows you obviously need a modeled ground to cast shadows on, and to get crisp shadows look here.