Treeline - Skydome Lighting

[MegaPixel]

I have created a cylinder with flipped normals to represent a simple Treeline for this exterior animation. I'm having trouble maintaining a consistant lighting throughout the entire treeline. As you can see on the attached image, My Direct Sunlight seems to be casting a dark cloud over half of it.

I have made the Treeline Material 100% Self Illuminating and even uped it's alpha a tad to try to compensate. I do want the treeline to cast shadows but not receive them and I have made sure the appropriate settings for that were adjusted in it's properties.

Does anyone have a solution for me or a better way to make a Treeline?

Thanks - Mega

[DennisHolland]

Hi Mega,

The best thing to do would be to use forest pro but I don't know if you've got the tool. Then you can draw a path and have a bunch of trees follow it. Or maybe just some rpc's at the horizon?

Otherwise you can use the exuisting treeline, make some extra ligthing with a row of omni's in front of the trees perhaps? It's the easiest way to light it up equally....

Dennis

[DelfoZ]

did u exclude the tree line cilinder from the sunlight ?

[JamesTaylor]

if you've got a fall off on your direct light that might be causing it as the light and dark areas match the shadows which are being cast.

Have you tried excluding the tree line from the main to see if it makes any difference?

[bokkins]

you can use omnis or any light (a lot), then include/exclude if needed. example, omni for treeline only w/o shadows and hi intensity (exclude the rest), omni for treeline only with shadow and low intensity (exlcude the rest). direct light for rest ecluding treeline. an so on.

[mwhite]

For the particular scene/orientation that you've shown I actually think the treeline looks pretty good. There are hard shadows on the ground from the framing with the sun on the right which would create the effect on the treeline that you are seeing.

I think it looks good with some variation rather than all the same - and I think the treeline on the left is a bit too illuminated.

If the shadows are not consistent throughout the entire animation then you will probably want to look into tunring them off. At this point I like them though.

Mike White