1 = this is the global shadow control - it is not well labelled. Turn this off and no direct light shadow are cast. This wants to be set to 100 for most renders.
2 = disable the sunlight should only turn the sunlight off - not affect the shadows cast by other light sources (that’s 1’s job).
3 = or set these values to 0 and you will have effectively disabled the sun.
Here is another attempt, seems there is a fine balance between getting the scene balanced with the sun turned off and HDR only.
I’ve been playing with “Intensity” & “HDRI Effect” one setting brightens up the sphere and the other brightens the ground. I cant seem to find a middle ground where the sphere is properly lit and the ground is not blown out.
I like the over all look, but I think the sphere should be a bit brighter.
@Analog-X64 - I like what you did, but you’re the final judge. HDRIs with a bright light source can be a bit of a problem to get the shadows or the parts not directly lit by the bright light source bright enough. One possibility is to turn the HDRI shadow intensity down. It works differently than the Sun shadow intensity, which adds transparency for light to the object and should stay at 100 in most cases.
Another possibility is to use an HDRI without a very prominent light source, like the sun, and use the Bryce sun to give the main light. In this case, the HDRI will give nice ambient light, which is mostly omnidirectional and thus also lights the shadowy parts. If the ground plane is set to not cast shadows, it gets transparent for light from below and if there’s too much of it, you can put another plane beneath it and set it to partly transparent to control the light.
Yet another method if you’re using an HDRI with a prominent light source, you can cover it with a sphere, which is set partly transparent to control the main light hitting the scene through the sphere and giving that sphere a lot of ambiance. So it looks like the sun it covers but does not cast light, the light comes from the HDRI sun and is attenuated by the sphere. This is a method to balance strong direct light and weak ambient light.
Another thing I usually do when I mix HDR with Bryce sun is to set the specular setting on the sun to 0, that’ll stop it from affecting the ground and bleaching out the texture or showing an awkward blurry light spot on the sphere.
Alternatively, with a bit more messing around with the balance of light sources you could try excluding the ground from the HDR. Then you can turn the intensity up to brighten the sphere without it having any effect on the ground plane.
You liking the results is the important thing, Analog. Only you know if you’ve accomplished your vision. I’ve enjoy watching the progression of your work. I actually like all you’ve posted, each one having something I find interesting.
I didn’t create a new topic, since its still related to this particular scene.
So I wanted to do a final render at 1920x1080 and it took slightly over 6 hours.
Is there something I could have done to optimize the render time? or that’s just how long a raytrace of this type is going to take.
I’m including a screenshot of the render settings. and the priority was set to high so all 4 cores were running at 100% during rendering.
I could setup network rendering with an additional 4 PC’s running Core 2 Duos each. But I’m not sure if the overhead of rendering over a network would help me in this instance. since I’m not actually animating.
Well… it all depends in this case as to the quality of light you are trying to achieve with the soft shadows. By and large, it is not efficient to use premium effects for just soft shadows. If you are in this position, it is often better to simulate the effect in regular mode using multiple light sources instead. Whatever you do though. Don’t use soft shadows in regular mode as this will possibly take even longer!
Optimising render times is something I specialise in, but I’d need you to send me the source to figure it out. If it is under 10mb you could email it to me. You might be doing it already by the best method, but without picking your scene apart it would take a long Q and A to get to the bottom of it.
You liking the results is the important thing, Analog. Only you know if you’ve accomplished your vision. I’ve enjoy watching the progression of your work. I actually like all you’ve posted, each one having something I find interesting.
Optimising render times is something I specialise in, but I’d need you to send me the source to figure it out. If it is under 10mb you could email it to me. You might be doing it already by the best method, but without picking your scene apart it would take a long Q and A to get to the bottom of it.
Thanks for taking a look I’ve pmed you a link where you can download the scene. It is 12MB and zipping the file didn’t make a difference in size.
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