Exact sun position for architects

[Terri Brown]

Hi guys,

 

I seem to remember being able to do this a while back, but I think it may have been in sketchup and I can't seem to find anything on how to achieve this in 3ds max: I need to set my vray sun position to exactly match what it is in reality here in Johannesburg. There's generally a functionality in 3D apps that allows you to enter longitude & latitude etc and time of year. In all my years of arch viz with Max I've always guestimated based on photos, but now I need the real deal.

 

Anyone know of anything?

 

Thanks

[Scott Dombrowski]

A Daylight system does just that. Command Panel / Create / Systems (the gears all the way on the right) / Daylight. Click and drag to size the compass, then click one more time to set the height of the sun. Compass size and sun height are just visual aides for the viewport and don't affect the lighting at all.

[Terri Brown]

Thanks Scott.

 

Is that Vray friendly? I never use daylight system - usually only HDRi lighting.

[Scott Dombrowski]

Yep. It creates a Sun and Skylight object that are linked to the geolocation and time of day settings. In the parameters, you can change the sun to a VRaySun and it automatically asks if you want a VRaySky in the environment map slot. I use this with Corona all the time, I'm assuming it works just as well with VRay.

[Terri Brown]

Awesome thanks

[Nicolai Bongard]

I can confirm it works with vray, just as Scott said.

[Sketchrender]

and this is very handy for getting the right sun path locations

 

you can check your north point and times.

 

https://sollumis.com/

[Jon Berntsen]

http://suncalc.net/ is also a nice one, with a slider.