Sun intensity

[Piotr]

@nathanletwory
When can we expect having sun intensity controlled? Something that would mimic cloudiness?

[Mahdiyar]

You can already control the intensity of the Sun and Skylight in Rendering Panel.

[Piotr]

I am aware of it. It doesn’t change the intensity of the shadows. On a cloudy day shadows are almost non-existing.

[andy (Andrew le Bihan)]

Basic intensity is coming in the next WIP. For cloudiness, use an HDR.

[Piotr]

I sensed it!

[Mahdiyar]

Meanwhile, you can change shadows sharpness from Rhino Options.

[Piotr]

I know that too. I refrain from messing in global display settings. Prefer file-to-file settings, but thanks for that.

[Jarek]

This is great. Thank you @andy - just tested it and works exactly as expected. The main goal ever since Skylight soft shadows were introduced was to be able to use them with combo along with Sun. But until sun intensity control was implemented, it was either overexposed or skylight shadows would be too faint if lowering the skylight intensity. So now all works nicely - good light from sun and deep skylight shadows. Big improvement for realtime viewport display quality!

–jarek

[Jarek]

Hi @Piotr,

there is a loophole to control sun shadow intensity, if that helps at all:

Can I adjust the shadow color of the SUN light?

Controlling sun light intensity and shadow in Rhino has been a long time wish of mine as well. Looks like @andy doesn’t see the need for this though - I don’t think this is on any To-Do list right now. With the shadow intensity there is a loophole though - if you export the sun info to a file, the shadow intensity is part of it. If you edit it and re-import, it will work (not exposed to Rhino UI). I wrote a script that automates this workaround - maybe this will help: SetSunShadowIntensity.rv…

[Piotr]

Hi Andy
Couldn’t be more happy seeing this implemented however:

1. Using arrows one only gets 1 or 0 values.
   

   

2. Would be lovely to edit this value from here too.
   

   
   
   P

[andy (Andrew le Bihan)]

I can edit the intensity from the lights panel - just select the Sun and click on Intensity. Don’t double click - that will open the Sun panel.

I will add finer grained control over the up/down control.

[Piotr]

Oh yes, it works indeed. Single click only. Thanks.

[andy (Andrew le Bihan)]

https://mcneel.myjetbrains.com/youtrack/issue/RH-57424

[Brenda]

If the sun had some optional width, its shadows would have a penumbra, and renderings would look better.

[nathanletwory (Nathan 'jesterKing' Letwory)]

In Cycles world that would be smooth.

[nathanletwory (Nathan 'jesterKing' Letwory)]

Maybe do same for color…