A method to test different sun angles?

[jonasthomas]

Hello,

 

I am working on a big project with lots of different buildings and I want to know what the best lighting situation is. It's a pretty important project and therefore I was wondering if someone knows about a method or a script I can use to make something like 100 different low-res renders with the sun coming from a different angle in each render?

 

If anyone has a solution or tips for this, I'll deeply appreciate it!

 

Thanks in advance,

 

Jonas

[numerobis]

maybe set up an animation with the desired frame number?

[Scott Schroeder]

Use the daylight system and animate the time.

[Tommy L]

Im assuming from your question you dont want a physically accurate sun....put the sun at 45 degrees and animate the sun along a circular path for 100 frames. around your site keeping the sun target in the center. Render animation.

[notamondayfan]

You should generally know where the sun will make the building look its best, so you probably aren't going to need to see too many variations, ie you very rarely want the sun either behind or in front of the camera.

 

I personally have never seen the need to create an automated way, to me it's just over-thinking the concept. Low and fast render settings, then hand position lights always works for me.

 

Dean

[jonasthomas]

Thanks for the answers! An animation sounds like a good idea. I didn't think of that.

 

@Dean Purchard: I think you may be right. Placing the sun in front or behind the camera is probably not a good idea, but this is actualy a personal project, so there is more time and I would like to test every possibility. Maybe it's a bit fanatical, I know, but I still want to try it at least once. :-)

 

Thanks!

[Stephen Thomas]

Isn't this the sort of thing that real time renderers such as VrayRT and Iray were invented for? You could still set it up as an animation and just scrub through the timeline, or just manually drag the sun around.