I've figured I can add lens flare for a light, but the sun and moon in Carrara are not lights with the full list of editable effects, near as I can tell. How would I go about adding lens flare from the sun, much as I did with this Vue image: http://www.renderosity.com/viewed.ez?galleryid=942354

You can place a bulb light in the same location as the sun (same visible location in your shot) and turn on lens flare for the bulb. If you don't want the actual light from the bulb, you should be able turn the brightness down to zero and still use the lens flare effect.

Chuck

Actually I believe that the light must be at least at 1 and that should not have any effect on your scene. Oh, yeah, and you may want to turn off "Casts shadows" so there is no extraneous artifacts from the light... Ken

So it involves a lot of little nudging and tweaking manually... :) Since you can only see where the sun is by rendering... Unless I've missed something.

In the sky editor you can get a better idea of where the sun is from the sun controls(a globe with a highlight on it) w/ a preview also.

Right, it's not like Bryce where you can display the sun/moon's origin. But, if you are using Carrara 4 or above, using the Realistic Sky interface allows you to see your actual scene while moving the sun/moon around - so putting it where you want is not too difficult doing it that way. Then you can go back to your assembly scene and place your bulb over that area.

Chuck

arcady,

The Carrara sun and moon are real-world simulations. You can create an accurate eclipse, and adjust the sun to an exact location based on time, latitude, etc. You do not have to use this sun/moon simulation, or (as has been noted) can augment the sun with other lighting.

Of course, if I take a photo that has the real sun in it, I will get a lens flare...

But that is not even an option in Carrara. I have to put in a light overlapping the sun, and that will probably never give the right angling and intensity.
Think of Walt Disney's observations about animation - that you had to overdo it to an almost absurd degree or it would look stiff. There is something similar here. When we look at images we are used to looking at pictures taken with a lens and the flaws that entails. As a result, the lack of those flaws in a rendering engine results in an image that looks artificial. While it is nice to be able to get that artificial look, it is frustrating to not have the option to get a more realistic photo image.

There's also the issue of making the moon other than our moon, for a science fiction scene or something like that.

Message edited on: 01/27/2006 19:54