Having a bit of a problem, but first the bloody details, PP2012.  Trying to get something that resembles the light on a full moon night, which would normally give quite a bit of detail.  I have seen some light sets that use a blue light, no, I don't want a blue cast on everything, the moon isn't blue.  I'd prefer to use only a single point light, way out there, but it isn't giving the effect as one would normally have.  Using the rdna skydome that comes with poser, the sky, as cloudless as they give in the materials. 

And now, where I think my complications are coming from, light following the inverse square law, but the moon so far away that the diameter of the earth would be inconsequential.  However, the light from objects it's hitting, the light reflected, or what you see is acting like that object is the source and not just a reflecting object.  That is, the intensity of what one would see is obeying the inverse square law for the distance from that object to the eyeball.

Anyone have a good light setup?  Using IDL and SSS, not that the SSS is going to make a difference.  The IDL will though.  Any help much appreciated.

D.

Single infinite light. intensity can be anything you like, since the perception of light by a camera depends on shutter speed, f stop, and sensor sensitivity. At ISO 6400 and f/2.8, moonlight looks exactly like sunlight.

However, you moght try an intensity of 5 to 10%.

Falloff is not a factor and should be set to constant, which is the default.

The difference in overall lighting is the sky at night is black. Well, unless you have that super sensitive camera setup, then it is blue even at night.

I'll go play for a while, but the single infinite just doesn't look right.  Trying to get it to look like the eye would see it.  Things have changed a bit since the days of Ektachrome 400 and push processing.  And it's hard to describe exactly what I'm looking for, I guess the loss of detail into a black shape in the distance and still see details closer up. 

D.

Are you using GC?

This photo was taken in moonlight.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/12598495@N08/5432568276/

What's your take on it?

For example, little Ben here has self-lit hair. Epic fail.

Single infinite light at 5%.

Quote - However, the light from objects it's hitting, the light reflected, or what you see is acting like that object is the source and not just a reflecting object.  That is, the intensity of what one would see is obeying the inverse square law for the distance from that object to the eyeball.

You got a very important point here. The light comming from the Moon is a plane wave that doesn't depend on the distance, so you must use a directional light. But the reflected Moon light is not more a plane wave, so it will have some function of distance, not necessarly inverse square, and this reflected light will illuminate the scene. You will need to use extra spot or point lights to simulate the reflected Moon light illumination. The illumination of the reflected light is much stronger and the direct Moon light is much weaker.

The number of light, its settings and position can be tricky. In general three or four lights should be enough. You can use a skydome or background to make stars visible and/or use it as a secondary illumination that can be very strong in some nights or none at all.

Unless you have a rendering engine able to deal with wave optics where only one directional Moon light would be enough.

You have two scenarios:

1- Moon in the back

The Moon is not visible and is illuminating your personaje and a forest behind. A single directional light will not work. The Moon light is directional and a directional light will work fine with your character, but will fail to work with the trees in the background because the refelected light from the trees is not more directional and it will depend on distace, more far away the tree more darker it is. You will have to use a spot light and play with the start and end settings to achieve the illumination you want. Then add some background plane with stars and with some ambient illumination on it.

2- Moon in the front.

The Moon is visible, this is much complicated. The Moon light is directional and is coming from the front, but it will illuminate very little the scene and only in the borders and the ground. What illumionates your character and trees is the reflected light by backscattering on the ground and objects. Plants have a very strong backscattering. What is worst is that the Moon light passing through the trees produce a shadowing effect very difficult to simulate.

You will need several spot lights illuminating your figures and trees, a directional light coming from the Moon position and a background star plane and a Moon Prop with ambient color.

BB:  Were the photo the effect I was looking for, it would be very good indeed, however I'm not looking for how a camera could make things seen, but how an eyeball would.  No shader problems, and trying many different values of GC to see what works.

Kawecki:  Light source behind the camera, rising full moon before the end of astronomical twilight.  Skies could be just a gray background, during that period one might see Jupiter or maybe Sirius, if anything.  Lighting the scene with the moon visible in the background, not something I want to do, enough problems doing it the other way.  No trees for this one, but buildings, and they're in the distance a little, far enough that most detail should be muted or not seen.

Been playing with this for a lot longer than I want to admit, without getting the effect I want. 

D.

I'm just spitballing out of my butt here...

Can poser's "Atmosphere" cast light? 

edit  hmmm, looks like no.  Never used this before.

That's about how it would look if everything was that close together, and when I do a scene that way, it's okay.  It's when the building is a lot further away, where the detail shouldn't be visible, more of a dark shape than being able to see the details that I'm having and opportunity with.  There should still be an obvious difference in light and shadow,  but most of the detail wouldn't be seen.  It's one of those things that if I could show someone, "Oh, yeah!  Now I see!", but how to put it into words is a problem.

D.

One more important detail is that human eyes respond very little to color with low illumination, so night scenes are in black & white with very little color. I don't know if there is a B&W node in Poser. What thing that will complicate is when the main object has direct illumination from the Moon (Moon behind the camer). In this case the object will have some color, but the buildings in the back will be in B&W.

No blue light, only grey scales. Blue illumination is used in movies, it creates a nice psychological effect associated with, night, ghosts, dreams, but no blue light in real life.

If you are concerned about distant detail, do this: 

reduce the diffuse_value for the texture very low.  The diffuse texture will reflect less scene lighting.  And to soften the detail further, place your texture filtering to quality on the image node.

The atmosphere will help grey out the detail over distance, but it brightens things over the distance. I have played with it, but can't figure a way to make it darken over distance.