Digital Art Zone

Hi all.

Just about to embark on a sunset animation and wondering how I can get the sun disk to shimmer and scintillate the way a real setting sun would.  Have not seen anything in the atmosphere settings.  I’m beginning to wonder if I need to make my own sun (ie a sphere) and do fun things to it rather than use the sun disc in the atmosphere.

Any nifty ideas.  Sorry if this is a double up with Carrara Cafe.  Was not clear which one has the wider team of enthusiasts.

Cheers,  Lx

stitlown - 27 November 2012 05:48 AM

Hi all.

Just about to embark on a sunset animation and wondering how I can get the sun disk to shimmer and scintillate the way a real setting sun would.  Have not seen anything in the atmosphere settings.  I’m beginning to wonder if I need to make my own sun (ie a sphere) and do fun things to it rather than use the sun disc in the atmosphere.

Any nifty ideas.  Sorry if this is a double up with Carrara Cafe.  Was not clear which one has the wider team of enthusiasts.

Cheers,  Lx

Hi stitlown,

The heat haze effect which I believe you are talking about is best done in post work. This has been mentioned previously, Project Dogwaffle does a similiar effect, but anything that can distort the image such as a semi-transparent plane with a distorting animated shader on it, like a pond ripple but verticle streaks would work, but like I say post work would be faster and more effective.

Chris

I would also say postwork! If you need the sun to shimmer with atmospheric distortions, but have foreground objects that don’t, you could render them separately using the Alpha Channel option in the render room and then composite the images in post production.

Thanks guys.  Postwork on animations is new territory for me.

Early days but I’m appearing to get reasonable results with a plane alpha-masked into a disc then modified with a non-animated taper, and animated wave modifier and a noise modifier.

Cheers,

Lx