Looking for tips on Magic Hour rendering

[Dave Buckley]

Guys i am looking for tips on what makes a good magic hour rendering. I love the renders that have been done while the sky is still blueish yet night lighting is turned on

 

Would love to know how you guys do them

 

And if possible post examples of magic hour renders that you have done

[hi2shiva]

y dont u try vray render.

[Dave Buckley]

any tips for how i would do it in there then??? i have just started to find my way around vray so tips would be good.

 

i am currently experimenting with the sun and sky inside vray

[Tommy Burns]

Use MR physical sky in MR just set the time of day and it will do the lighting for ya

[SandmanNinja]

Gotta love that Daylight System.

[Dave Buckley]

ok so i know how to use the mental ray daylight system but i have now moved to vray to look at lighting scenes in that (pretty easy i guess) but how does the sun and sky in vray work???

 

as far as i can tell all i can do is position the sun somewhere in the 3d space. does the intensity and colour of the vray sun change depending on where you place it in 3d space??

 

also when i drag the vray sky from the environment slot to the material editor there is some 'automatic sun node' what the hell does that do

 

any help is much appreciated guys cheers

[Tim Nelson]

I personally don't even bother with vray sun & sky if I'm doing that kind of rendering. You can get into hdri & all that if you want, but it basically boils down to two colors, blue and yellow. I usually start with a dark blue color in the vray environment slot and mess around till it looks ok. Then you start adding your artificial light sources, interior lights, street lights, whatever. Those usually have a very strong amber color to them, unless they are fluorescents, then they're kind of green. If you want to add a little sun, I still use a standard target direct light, with large area shadows. Make that a rich red, orangey color and use a pretty low intensity.

 

It's really simple, but the key is finding a good balance between them all, and of course, photoshop will save the day every time.

[Dave Buckley]

ok thanks for that

 

so when do you use sun and sky????

 

the thing is i've only just started looking at vray so the sun and sky is all i know at the minute, not really too clued up on older traditional methods.

 

what i have picked up is that there are generally these ways of lighting exteriors,

 

• environment override colour and standard direct
  
• environment override colour and vray sun
  
• vray sun and vray sky
  
• environment override hdri and standard direct
  
• environment override hdri and vray sun
  
• dome light and some form of direct light whether it be standard or vray sun
  

is there any more methods that i am missing, i am just trying to get to grips with everything

 

i guess the one i choose depends on what i need to do and therefore whichever one does it quickest

[Dave Buckley]

oh and tim your work is exactly what i am trying to achieve, i love your website layout and also the very symmetrical second to last render is superb. i love it.

 

maybe you could drop me an email with how you achieved it in terms of lighting setup and render settings

 

oh that was my other question, do you keep the same final render settings regardless of the scene in terms of primary and secondary bounces etc and colour mapping etc

[Tim Nelson]

Hi Dave,

 

I don't really have too many tricks as far as render settings go. I usually work with the same color mapping settings. Linear, gamma at 2.2. And for the most part I don't really mess around too much with the other stuff. I'll change irradience map & light cache quality based on my needs, and change little things like AA & stuff, but none of that really affects the overall mood of the image like the GI, lights, etc.

 

That 2nd to last picture was one I did for the 2005 competition here. It actually came out of the render looking pretty bland, but I photoshopped the heck out of it. As far as I remember, that too was just a direct light for the sun, and probably a blueish color for the env.

[Dave Buckley]

well it looks good now anyway, which bits did you photoshop

[Tim Nelson]

I did a lot of color work, and levels, etc. I think this is originally how it rendered. Pretty boring.

[Dave Buckley]

still doesn't look that bad, composition is fantastic

[Sawyer]

This was a really fast 2 day project. It was rendered with the vray dome light and a gradient map.

 

I am such a hack I took the colors from the lights from some of the reference night images Tim posted a few weeks back. All comes back to Tim .

 

edit - image removed

Edited July 31, 2008 by Sawyer

[Dave Buckley]

any chance you could explain the dome light/gradient map process

 

and don't suppose you have a link to the reference images

 

nice render by the way

[Dave Buckley]

doesnt the dome light just do the same thing as the GI Environment Skylight?????

 

Or does it do something different??? Or can you do different things with it???

[Sawyer]

Here is the original link:

 

http://www.cgarchitect.com/vb/31208-few-exteriors-2.html

 

I don't know if there is much of a trick using the dome light. It accepts maps and it does a better job of lighting than the environment options do (I did a test using vraylight mat in an environment vs using the dome light - no contest in terms of time or quality. But don't take my word for it its a simple test to do go out and try it). But everything gets tweaked in ps anyway.

[Dave Buckley]

so what was your method for dome light and gradient map???

 

i am very new to vray just learning the ropes

 

and why would you have put a vray light material in the GI ENvironment Skylight???

 

Can't you just turn it on as it gives off illumination anyway???

[Sawyer]

Yes you are right I tried 3 methods:

 

1. a dome with a light material

2. a map in the gi environ slot

3. dome light with a grad map

 

I had best results with #3.

 

I have had similar experiences using HDRI's in the various environ slots.