Possibly as well, if the maps are the same image file, ditch one of them, IF it is using bump, and displacement. I don't have any other ideas yet, CPU bound, and just fired up Studio to try that other post's suggestion.
FYI, I just killed CUDA and physx on my useless graphics card (In the driver settings window). It should at least make the Daz Studio interface go a tad smother with this 8600GT.
Today's question: Eyebrow masks.
Is there a way to get eyebrow masks working in Iray?
For at the moment, the eyebrows simply vanish.
Using OOT's Fiends.
Yes. When you Ctrl-click on the shader and ignore textures, the alpha map will be preserved. Used on the Genesis BJD brow today.
Hmm, something different going on with the Fiend.
The eyebrows do not stay.
I tried without applying the shader and I tried with ctrl-click shader.
In both instances the brows disappear in Nividia.
I haven't had DS crash when cancelling the window - either using the cancel button or the window's close button - but closing the window does lose the render -in-progress, which you might want to look at, so using the progress bar is a good idea anyway. If you do get crashes closing via the render window please report that as a bug.
good idea, another bug I found is rendering Aiko3 with angelyna wings...iRay can´t pass of the iteration 1!!!
If the wings have lots of intersecting transmapped planes for the feathers that may be the same as the bug with some ivy models, of which nVidia is aware. Which isn't necessarily to say don't report it.
Hmm, something different going on with the Fiend.
The eyebrows do not stay.
I tried without applying the shader and I tried with ctrl-click shader.
In both instances the brows disappear in Nividia.
Aha! Something in Iray mustn't be playing friendly (or fiendly, in this case,) with LIE. Perhaps a trip to an image editor would be the answer, until DAZ sorts out LIE+Iray. Once you know what combo of skin and overlays you want, combine them outside of Studio, into one image to avoid using LIE with Iray.
It wouldn't help with makeup, but is there also some possibility the Fiend brow UVs are compatible with the BJD brow? (...and can the BJD brow be fit to G2? I don't use G2 much yet so don't know.) I haven't checked yet, but I'd guess the BJD brow uses Genesis or V4 UVs, whichever is most common. It's a separate object with mask, so it doesn't rely on LIE.
Hmm...taking that train of thought to one more stop -- a mostly invisible G2 figure with masked makeup or brow (one each, again avoiding LIE) fit to your existing G2 like clothes, with a bit higher displacement to push the skin outside the original (or even just translate/scale the head by a tiny bit) could also work. It might be more resource-intensive, though, so tread carefully on computers that have trouble with multi-person scenes.
Added: That last bit might also involve intersecting transparency, so potentially add that little Iray bug (See Richard and zilver's posts above) to your list of problems. Could be worth a shot, though.
Er...actually, it's disturbingly encouraging. I tried two of my ideas and this was the result. What you see are the BJD brow fitted to G2F, in brown, in front of the BJD brow texture applied to G2F herself, in blond. I didn't try adding another G2F or hide the rest of her, but the effect worked. Note that BJD is for Genesis, so G2F's face is using Vic5 UVs. The mask for Fiend should work, assuming it has a basic alpha image to insert into the Cutout Opacity node while using the Iray shader.
16pages in and I can't stand to read this thread anymore. Oooh the lighting. Huzzah. Yeah, I get it. Great!
What I need to know is how not to have a grainy image. This is the same problem I had with luxrender and why I dropped the render engine. I left a picture rendering all night. It's grainy. I increased samples and am sitting here watching this image that's not getting any less grainy. I really need some help with that, please? I mean, it's awesome no one else has had this problem but graininess and I... we are old enemies. Old enemies. He killed my father.
Unlike Luxrender, iray doesn't pick up where it left off. So if it's going to take a day to render an image and still have graininess there's no point to life!!
What I need to know is how not to have a grainy image. This is the same problem I had with luxrender and why I dropped the render engine. I left a picture rendering all night. It's grainy. I increased samples and am sitting here watching this image that's not getting any less grainy. I really need some help with that, please? I mean, it's awesome no one else has had this problem but graininess and I... we are old enemies. Old enemies. He killed my father.
Unlike Luxrender, iray doesn't pick up where it left off. So if it's going to take a day to render an image and still have graininess there's no point to life!!
I'm not the expert in this, but I know others here can help. My above image got stopped after a few minutes, as I wasn't trying for a finished render. No idea what an hour or twenty would do, but I think it'd clear up.
First thing to look at is what you're rendering, then what's going on with the shaders, lights, camera and render settings. I think people are actually, in general, having better luck in less time with Iray than they did with Lux, at least when it was new. If you share some of the details of what you're trying to do, I'm sure the folks here can help guide you.
Post a render, as well, so they know what kind of graininess is the problem. (Fireflies, vs. shadow grain vs. just unfinished render grain.) Different problems (and some effects like metal flake) will look "grainy" in different ways.
Added: Computer specs will also make a difference. Mine barely scrapes the minimum requirements, so renders take quite a while...but all renders take quite a while, lol, not just Iray.
Yeah, an hour or twenty you'd think you'd get less than grain. But all night means while I slept, so we're talking something like 8 hours give or take. I have no idea when it stopped, though, because when I came back it apparently had decided it was finished.
Graininess as in unfinished render grain. Fireflies are fireflies, shadow grain is something I semi know how to battle. Unfinished renders = waste of time.
Most of the settings are default.
Photoreal
samples are maxed
architectural sampler is on
firefly off
noise filter on - but I haven't a clue what to do with it.
exposure value I just moved to 11 from curiosity but it was at default, with all the other parts in that area
environment is dome and scene because when I try scene only things go black
then I made my single light source the sun node, and set it to 1100 hours.
As far as lighting and everything goes, it looks like I would like it. If only it would render up and stop being grainy....
Trying DS4.8 on my MacBook Pro, I did get hangs a couple of times on cancel; on my desktop iMac (2011 vintage), I have canceled many times and never experienced a hang.
Yeah, an hour or twenty you'd think you'd get less than grain. But all night means while I slept, so we're talking something like 8 hours give or take. I have no idea when it stopped, though, because when I came back it apparently had decided it was finished.
Graininess as in unfinished render grain. Fireflies are fireflies, shadow grain is something I semi know how to battle. Unfinished renders = waste of time.
Most of the settings are default...(snip)
Okay. One thing to also keep in mind is that there are three triggers that end a render: Max samples, max time, or rendering converged. You may not have gotten the most out of your overnight render, because the default max rendering time is 7200 seconds, which is only two hours. (A long time on a fast machine, a short time on a slow machine. Reasonable on today's average comp.) To allow your renders to go longer, you'll have to raise the max time.
Setting max samples high won't necessarily make the render take longer, it will just allow it to keep working. It won't have any effect if the render times out, before that number of samples can be reached. The convergence probably shouldn't need tweaking, either. I suspect max time may have undermined you, here. (There could be more than that, but it's a start.)
If max time is a problem then I'm not going to be able to use iray. I can't have my machine taken up with hours and hours of rending without even knowing if it's going to do well or not. With Luxrender, by example, I let it use my machine for four long days and the graininess NEVER went away. How will I know if that will happen here? I won't. I have no way of knowing especially judging by the conversations I'm finding about this system.
I mean, yeah. The lighting is fabulous. But that's all anyone seems to want to talk about, and all the great lighting in the world isn't doing people like me any good when we can't even get a finished render. But that's neither here nor there....
And as I mentioned before it's not like I can tell the system to pick up where it left off. This machine is my livelihood. While it's rendering I'm lucky to be able to answer forum posts. So my misgivings about switching to iray may have just been confirmed.
But I'll try not to be too disappointed. At least pwtoon is fixed, and some of my livelihood was destroyed when it went down. I should be working on getting that part fixed.
I can’t have my machine taken up with hours and hours of rending without even knowing if it’s going to do well or not.
There is no reason to do any Iray renders with no idea of how it is going to do. You can always set the aux viewport to show you the Iray draw style and have a very clear idea of what a final render will look like.
Aux viewport? Sounds like something else I need to learn. I'm not even sure what you mean by it and am unable to do a search right now: rendering. I'm rendering to a new window instead of direct to file. I can tell you that this new render is 600 pixels wide, it's been about 30 minutes so it's still grainy but I'm sure that's a given. 30 Minutes.
They also mention that the more lights you actually have set up in a scene the faster the render goes. SO you may want to play with lighting to see if your render speeds improve. I'm not on board yet as I need a new card and I don't do beta's any more so will wait for the General release.
I haven't had DS crash when cancelling the window - either using the cancel button or the window's close button - but closing the window does lose the render -in-progress, which you might want to look at, so using the progress bar is a good idea anyway. If you do get crashes closing via the render window please report that as a bug.
...I had it happen only once so far but I was also pushing the render parameters quite hard as well. (maximum 100% convergence). Scene file was just over 8 GB (out of 12 GB) when the entire application went into "Not Responding" mode after I clicked on the Progress box's Cancel button. Let it sit for about 30 min to see if it cleared up and after it didn't. closed the process in Windows Task Manager.
Yeah, an hour or twenty you'd think you'd get less than grain. But all night means while I slept, so we're talking something like 8 hours give or take. I have no idea when it stopped, though, because when I came back it apparently had decided it was finished.
Graininess as in unfinished render grain. Fireflies are fireflies, shadow grain is something I semi know how to battle. Unfinished renders = waste of time.
Most of the settings are default...(snip)
Okay. One thing to also keep in mind is that there are three triggers that end a render: Max samples, max time, or rendering converged. You may not have gotten the most out of your overnight render, because the default max rendering time is 7200 seconds, which is only two hours. (A long time on a fast machine, a short time on a slow machine. Reasonable on today's average comp.) To allow your renders to go longer, you'll have to raise the max time.
Setting max samples high won't necessarily make the render take longer, it will just allow it to keep working. It won't have any effect if the render times out, before that number of samples can be reached. The convergence probably shouldn't need tweaking, either. I suspect max time may have undermined you, here. (There could be more than that, but it's a start.)
...I've set my Max time to 14400sec (4 hours) and been getting pretty decent results in just over two hours (convergence reset to default of 95%),
BTW, 100% will make it go "forever" just like Lux for even though I had the time limit set to 4 hours, it was still rendering over 8 hours later.
Aux Viewport defaults to the lower left side of the screen, the first time you open 4.8. I also find it useful for quick texturing edits, even only in OpenGL, because I can leave it on Perspective view and it keeps the camera headlight on, even when it's off in my main view set to the camera. Otherwise, I need to turn the headlight on, then edit, then remember to turn the headlight back off before hitting the render button, which leaves me with only 1% free memory and a mouse cursor stuck in tar. Cancelling renders is tricky...and often involves ending the Studio process in Task Manager. Save, save, save...
KK, that was what I figured. I think it's one of those exponential/logarithmic things, so 100% could effectively be infinity, while each percentage away from 0 is a bigger leap than the last.
Er...how can render quality be negative? I don't mean aesthetically, lol, but numerically. Maybe it makes negative images? Let's find out...
Answered: Meh. It didn't seem to do so much at -1. Tried +0.1 and -1000, not very much difference. That wasn't exciting at all. :P The renders tried to finish quickly (that 100% just sits for quite a while, so I got bored and cancelled,) and were grainy, but better than I'd need to shrink by 50% or more for a small pic or icon.
Ooh. Turning off Preview Lights (Ctrl + L) shows the camera headlight when it's turned off, giving me a full-size preview. I was wishing there was a headlight toggle command, and there it is. That's better than the Aux Preview, since my comp can't handle the constant interactive Iray preview. More window space! I don't know if it's a new feature, but it certainly helps with setup on a slow computer.
Aux Viewport defaults to the lower left side of the screen, the first time you open 4.8. I also find it useful for quick texturing edits, even only in OpenGL, because I can leave it on Perspective view and it keeps the camera headlight on, even when it's off in my main view set to the camera. Otherwise, I need to turn the headlight on, then edit, then remember to turn the headlight back off before hitting the render button, which leaves me with only 1% free memory and a mouse cursor stuck in tar. Cancelling renders is tricky...and often involves ending the Studio process in Task Manager. Save, save, save...
KK, that was what I figured. I think it's one of those exponential/logarithmic things, so 100% could effectively be infinity, while each percentage away from 0 is a bigger leap than the last.
...kind of like standing say four feet from a wall and then moving halfway closer to it each time. Theoretically, you will never actually touch the wall.
I think I see whats happening with using the mesh lights and the photometric lights, but I still can't work out how to use the environment lights that are replacing things like UE2, UberArea and Distant lights.
I'm trying to get some directional sunlight in an outdoor scene with a skydome (http://www.daz3d.com/dry-mud-desert) but I tried the null method and I tried the sun dial method and both just created a pitch black scene. I'd post the images, but they're just large black rectangles lol. Do you have any ideas where I might be going wrong please?
How did you set up the scene? I think you'd either have to put the dome texture in the environment map and hide the skydome so it isn't rendered, or else set the skydome to be a double-sided emissive material.
If you are going to use sunlight you are probably better off sticking the skydome image into the environment channel.
Thanks for the help... I understand "skydome image" but not "environment channel". I'm guessing you mean using the skydome image map in the Environment Map section under Render Settings > Environment.... is that right?
How did you set up the scene? I think you'd either have to put the dome texture in the environment map and hide the skydome so it isn't rendered, or else set the skydome to be a double-sided emissive material.
I added the full mud desert scene, removed the lights, turned off the camera headlamp, and then in one case added the sundial and set it to an angle to match the sun. In the other attempts I set a null in the same location as the sun on the skydome and then changed the SS Sun setting to select the null. Neither worked.
Thanks - you just answered my question to timmins above. If I set the skydome to be a double-sided emissive surface isn't that going to emit light from everywhere, rather than directional from the sun?
Edit: The suggestions have worked, sort of - thank you both. The light its creating is extremely blue though (presumably because of the skydome image map?). Is there a way to alter that?
If you put the image in render > environment I THINK it works better than if you create the skydome as an emission object. The system more intelligently interprets things.
If it's still too blue, there may be adjustments? Hrm
So I'm trying to make ice cubes... and they look ok, but I'd love to have that effect of a white/opaque core with a translucent outer part. Any ideas?
I've attempted translucence (not enough), and I've played with SSS/volume. I can't get SSS to create a transparent to opaque effect... the effect is generally material-wide.
I also attempted to play with top coat but I don't think it's thick enough to work.
Comments
Yeah, it's definitely the displacement maps. Dang it.
(I used Benjamin + skin overlay and then LIE baker)
Any suggestions?
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/viewreply/787248/
Other thought, is it using the correct UV maps (V5 vs A5, etc).
Possibly as well, if the maps are the same image file, ditch one of them, IF it is using bump, and displacement. I don't have any other ideas yet, CPU bound, and just fired up Studio to try that other post's suggestion.
FYI, I just killed CUDA and physx on my useless graphics card (In the driver settings window). It should at least make the Daz Studio interface go a tad smother with this 8600GT.
Yes. When you Ctrl-click on the shader and ignore textures, the alpha map will be preserved. Used on the Genesis BJD brow today.
Hmm, something different going on with the Fiend.
The eyebrows do not stay.
I tried without applying the shader and I tried with ctrl-click shader.
In both instances the brows disappear in Nividia.
OK, found a thread on it:
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/54096/
Looks like will have to work around.
good idea, another bug I found is rendering Aiko3 with angelyna wings...iRay can´t pass of the iteration 1!!!
If the wings have lots of intersecting transmapped planes for the feathers that may be the same as the bug with some ivy models, of which nVidia is aware. Which isn't necessarily to say don't report it.
Aha! Something in Iray mustn't be playing friendly (or fiendly, in this case,) with LIE. Perhaps a trip to an image editor would be the answer, until DAZ sorts out LIE+Iray. Once you know what combo of skin and overlays you want, combine them outside of Studio, into one image to avoid using LIE with Iray.
It wouldn't help with makeup, but is there also some possibility the Fiend brow UVs are compatible with the BJD brow? (...and can the BJD brow be fit to G2? I don't use G2 much yet so don't know.) I haven't checked yet, but I'd guess the BJD brow uses Genesis or V4 UVs, whichever is most common. It's a separate object with mask, so it doesn't rely on LIE.
Hmm...taking that train of thought to one more stop -- a mostly invisible G2 figure with masked makeup or brow (one each, again avoiding LIE) fit to your existing G2 like clothes, with a bit higher displacement to push the skin outside the original (or even just translate/scale the head by a tiny bit) could also work. It might be more resource-intensive, though, so tread carefully on computers that have trouble with multi-person scenes.
Added: That last bit might also involve intersecting transparency, so potentially add that little Iray bug (See Richard and zilver's posts above) to your list of problems. Could be worth a shot, though.
It's Angry Birds: G2F edition
Er...actually, it's disturbingly encouraging. I tried two of my ideas and this was the result. What you see are the BJD brow fitted to G2F, in brown, in front of the BJD brow texture applied to G2F herself, in blond. I didn't try adding another G2F or hide the rest of her, but the effect worked. Note that BJD is for Genesis, so G2F's face is using Vic5 UVs. The mask for Fiend should work, assuming it has a basic alpha image to insert into the Cutout Opacity node while using the Iray shader.
16pages in and I can't stand to read this thread anymore. Oooh the lighting. Huzzah. Yeah, I get it. Great!
What I need to know is how not to have a grainy image. This is the same problem I had with luxrender and why I dropped the render engine. I left a picture rendering all night. It's grainy. I increased samples and am sitting here watching this image that's not getting any less grainy. I really need some help with that, please? I mean, it's awesome no one else has had this problem but graininess and I... we are old enemies. Old enemies. He killed my father.
Unlike Luxrender, iray doesn't pick up where it left off. So if it's going to take a day to render an image and still have graininess there's no point to life!!
I'm not the expert in this, but I know others here can help. My above image got stopped after a few minutes, as I wasn't trying for a finished render. No idea what an hour or twenty would do, but I think it'd clear up.
First thing to look at is what you're rendering, then what's going on with the shaders, lights, camera and render settings. I think people are actually, in general, having better luck in less time with Iray than they did with Lux, at least when it was new. If you share some of the details of what you're trying to do, I'm sure the folks here can help guide you.
Post a render, as well, so they know what kind of graininess is the problem. (Fireflies, vs. shadow grain vs. just unfinished render grain.) Different problems (and some effects like metal flake) will look "grainy" in different ways.
Added: Computer specs will also make a difference. Mine barely scrapes the minimum requirements, so renders take quite a while...but all renders take quite a while, lol, not just Iray.
Yeah, an hour or twenty you'd think you'd get less than grain. But all night means while I slept, so we're talking something like 8 hours give or take. I have no idea when it stopped, though, because when I came back it apparently had decided it was finished.
Graininess as in unfinished render grain. Fireflies are fireflies, shadow grain is something I semi know how to battle. Unfinished renders = waste of time.
Most of the settings are default.
Photoreal
samples are maxed
architectural sampler is on
firefly off
noise filter on - but I haven't a clue what to do with it.
exposure value I just moved to 11 from curiosity but it was at default, with all the other parts in that area
environment is dome and scene because when I try scene only things go black
then I made my single light source the sun node, and set it to 1100 hours.
As far as lighting and everything goes, it looks like I would like it. If only it would render up and stop being grainy....
Trying DS4.8 on my MacBook Pro, I did get hangs a couple of times on cancel; on my desktop iMac (2011 vintage), I have canceled many times and never experienced a hang.
Ah ha!
It looks like, for the most part, using 0 max value fixes most of the problems. Except the fingernails are messed up. hmm
edit: Eh, nuts to it, I'll just use bump maps. Heh.
Okay. One thing to also keep in mind is that there are three triggers that end a render: Max samples, max time, or rendering converged. You may not have gotten the most out of your overnight render, because the default max rendering time is 7200 seconds, which is only two hours. (A long time on a fast machine, a short time on a slow machine. Reasonable on today's average comp.) To allow your renders to go longer, you'll have to raise the max time.
Setting max samples high won't necessarily make the render take longer, it will just allow it to keep working. It won't have any effect if the render times out, before that number of samples can be reached. The convergence probably shouldn't need tweaking, either. I suspect max time may have undermined you, here. (There could be more than that, but it's a start.)
If max time is a problem then I'm not going to be able to use iray. I can't have my machine taken up with hours and hours of rending without even knowing if it's going to do well or not. With Luxrender, by example, I let it use my machine for four long days and the graininess NEVER went away. How will I know if that will happen here? I won't. I have no way of knowing especially judging by the conversations I'm finding about this system.
I mean, yeah. The lighting is fabulous. But that's all anyone seems to want to talk about, and all the great lighting in the world isn't doing people like me any good when we can't even get a finished render. But that's neither here nor there....
And as I mentioned before it's not like I can tell the system to pick up where it left off. This machine is my livelihood. While it's rendering I'm lucky to be able to answer forum posts. So my misgivings about switching to iray may have just been confirmed.
But I'll try not to be too disappointed. At least pwtoon is fixed, and some of my livelihood was destroyed when it went down. I should be working on getting that part fixed.
There is no reason to do any Iray renders with no idea of how it is going to do. You can always set the aux viewport to show you the Iray draw style and have a very clear idea of what a final render will look like.
Aux viewport? Sounds like something else I need to learn. I'm not even sure what you mean by it and am unable to do a search right now: rendering. I'm rendering to a new window instead of direct to file. I can tell you that this new render is 600 pixels wide, it's been about 30 minutes so it's still grainy but I'm sure that's a given. 30 Minutes.
They also mention that the more lights you actually have set up in a scene the faster the render goes. SO you may want to play with lighting to see if your render speeds improve. I'm not on board yet as I need a new card and I don't do beta's any more so will wait for the General release.
Yeah I looked at that, but didn't like how the image looked. I've always been a fan of certain types of shadows I guess.
...I had it happen only once so far but I was also pushing the render parameters quite hard as well. (maximum 100% convergence). Scene file was just over 8 GB (out of 12 GB) when the entire application went into "Not Responding" mode after I clicked on the Progress box's Cancel button. Let it sit for about 30 min to see if it cleared up and after it didn't. closed the process in Windows Task Manager.
Okay. One thing to also keep in mind is that there are three triggers that end a render: Max samples, max time, or rendering converged. You may not have gotten the most out of your overnight render, because the default max rendering time is 7200 seconds, which is only two hours. (A long time on a fast machine, a short time on a slow machine. Reasonable on today's average comp.) To allow your renders to go longer, you'll have to raise the max time.
Setting max samples high won't necessarily make the render take longer, it will just allow it to keep working. It won't have any effect if the render times out, before that number of samples can be reached. The convergence probably shouldn't need tweaking, either. I suspect max time may have undermined you, here. (There could be more than that, but it's a start.)
...I've set my Max time to 14400sec (4 hours) and been getting pretty decent results in just over two hours (convergence reset to default of 95%),
BTW, 100% will make it go "forever" just like Lux for even though I had the time limit set to 4 hours, it was still rendering over 8 hours later.
Available in windows/panes. Was introduced in 4.7 if I remember correctly.
Aux Viewport defaults to the lower left side of the screen, the first time you open 4.8. I also find it useful for quick texturing edits, even only in OpenGL, because I can leave it on Perspective view and it keeps the camera headlight on, even when it's off in my main view set to the camera. Otherwise, I need to turn the headlight on, then edit, then remember to turn the headlight back off before hitting the render button, which leaves me with only 1% free memory and a mouse cursor stuck in tar. Cancelling renders is tricky...and often involves ending the Studio process in Task Manager. Save, save, save...
KK, that was what I figured. I think it's one of those exponential/logarithmic things, so 100% could effectively be infinity, while each percentage away from 0 is a bigger leap than the last.
Er...how can render quality be negative? I don't mean aesthetically, lol, but numerically. Maybe it makes negative images? Let's find out...
Answered: Meh. It didn't seem to do so much at -1. Tried +0.1 and -1000, not very much difference. That wasn't exciting at all. :P The renders tried to finish quickly (that 100% just sits for quite a while, so I got bored and cancelled,) and were grainy, but better than I'd need to shrink by 50% or more for a small pic or icon.
Ooh. Turning off Preview Lights (Ctrl + L) shows the camera headlight when it's turned off, giving me a full-size preview. I was wishing there was a headlight toggle command, and there it is. That's better than the Aux Preview, since my comp can't handle the constant interactive Iray preview. More window space! I don't know if it's a new feature, but it certainly helps with setup on a slow computer.
...kind of like standing say four feet from a wall and then moving halfway closer to it each time. Theoretically, you will never actually touch the wall.
Hiya,
I think I see whats happening with using the mesh lights and the photometric lights, but I still can't work out how to use the environment lights that are replacing things like UE2, UberArea and Distant lights.
I'm trying to get some directional sunlight in an outdoor scene with a skydome (http://www.daz3d.com/dry-mud-desert) but I tried the null method and I tried the sun dial method and both just created a pitch black scene. I'd post the images, but they're just large black rectangles lol. Do you have any ideas where I might be going wrong please?
First thing I'd try is hiding the skydome.
If you are going to use sunlight you are probably better off sticking the skydome image into the environment channel.
How did you set up the scene? I think you'd either have to put the dome texture in the environment map and hide the skydome so it isn't rendered, or else set the skydome to be a double-sided emissive material.
I added the full mud desert scene, removed the lights, turned off the camera headlamp, and then in one case added the sundial and set it to an angle to match the sun. In the other attempts I set a null in the same location as the sun on the skydome and then changed the SS Sun setting to select the null. Neither worked.
Thanks - you just answered my question to timmins above. If I set the skydome to be a double-sided emissive surface isn't that going to emit light from everywhere, rather than directional from the sun?
Edit: The suggestions have worked, sort of - thank you both. The light its creating is extremely blue though (presumably because of the skydome image map?). Is there a way to alter that?
If you put the image in render > environment I THINK it works better than if you create the skydome as an emission object. The system more intelligently interprets things.
If it's still too blue, there may be adjustments? Hrm
So I'm trying to make ice cubes... and they look ok, but I'd love to have that effect of a white/opaque core with a translucent outer part. Any ideas?
I've attempted translucence (not enough), and I've played with SSS/volume. I can't get SSS to create a transparent to opaque effect... the effect is generally material-wide.
I also attempted to play with top coat but I don't think it's thick enough to work.