Sun + Sky bugs

[rudolf.neumerkel (Rudi)]

I am trying to render sth similar to this solar power plant using the native Cycles renderer:

I encountered 3 issues/questions:

1. Sun+Sky Texture does not appear in RH8
2. Mirror light reflections do not seem to be computed correctly
3. How can one introduce fog into the scene, so that the focal point with all the concentrated sun beams becomes visible?

Issue 1

I tried to recreate a simple sun & sky scene like described here by @nathanletwory:

Sun + Sky model in Rhino

Create a new basic environment. Then set a physical sky as the sky texture. Don’t forget to set the physical sky texture to use document sun. [image] That way when you change the sun location the texture will update. [image]

in RH7 this works, although this requires way too many steps IMO (in RH8 it is now one step less btw…)

Now I tried to do the same in RH8 without any success. The issue seems to be the environment color, which overrides the sky texture:

Also, changing the sun angle is way too sluggish… when inputting a new value for the altitude one has to wait for way too long in order to see if any numeric values have been typed

Issue 2

The selected “mirrors” below do not seem to reflect any of the sunlight.

rh8render.3dm (3.2 MB)

[nathanletwory (Nathan 'jesterKing' Letwory)]

Hmm, looks like it wasn’t fully implemented as native procedural texture - or maybe just buggy. Reported as RH-78269 physical sky texture missing.

[rudolf.neumerkel (Rudi)]

Thank you! Any ideas regarding questions 2 and 3?

[nathanletwory (Nathan 'jesterKing' Letwory)]

• mirrored light: Cycles hasn’t such caustics capability
• “god rays” are not possible currently either, there aren’t volumetric materials available. You can fake those, however. See God rays in render - #4 by nathanletwory