Over the years one builds up a personal repertoire of lighting tricks. Having moved from Bryce to Vue, I have to find Vue equivalents for the sort of things I used to do in Bryce. One thing I find the lack of in Vue is the equivalent for Bryce's parallel spotlight, which is like a directional light, but it can be sized in area. This was always very useful in outdoor scenes for sunlight. The trouble with sunlight is that it can be too bright. If I let the Vue sun be the main illuminator, I can end up with massive highlights on foreground objects. Changing the colour of the sun to something darker reduces the illumination, but also affects the colour of the scene, which I don't want. I can reduce the influence of sunlight in the atmosphere editor, but only at the expense of increasing ambience, or darkening the whole image (which affects any other lights in the scene). What I really want to do is just manipulate the intensity of the sunlight, leaving other lights alone. (I know there's an option about whether only sunlight or other lights are affected in the atmosphere editor, but it doesn't seem to work quite like that). In Bryce I would get rid of the Bryce sun and put in several big parallel spots to give me my sunlit areas, and I would have complete control over those. What strategies do people use with Vue to get good sunlight on foreground objects without excessive brightness?

Which version of Vue do you have ? Vue Infinite has some additional tricks over the other versions.

You can do the same thing in Vue by shutting the sun off completely (go to the Edit Shadows and lighting Tab for the light and select none on the influence tab). The you're free to light the scene however you want. Rou can use a Spotlight as a light to be sized for a certain area.

If you change the sun color to a grey, or a less bright hue the same as it was, scene colors will not change. That is equivalent to just "turning down the sun".

Of course it sometimes more convenient to replace the sun with a distant, collimated (parallel rays) light source, which has a level control. Or sometimes a spotlight is needed, depending on your goals.

_ jc...'Art Head Start' e-book
.......'Art Head Start.com site Digital Art skills. Free lighting chapter, tutes, Vue models, tex pix.

I have Vue 5i. The trouble with using gray sunlight is it's gray. Sunlight should have some colour in it. But as soon as you introduce a little yellow into your sunlight, then making it less bright means the whole scene is bathed in a deep unwanted colour. The trouble with using a spotlight is it behaves as a spotlight, i.e. it is conical and falls off away from the centre. What's needed is a large parallel light, which seems to be missing from Vue. Or have I just not found it?

If you change only the brightness ("Luminosity") of the color, there will be no hue shifts in your scene. Just use the HLS color editor controls, rather than the RGB ones and change only the "L(uminosity)".

But the range of adjustment is not great that way. Here are a couple of other ideas:

1. Use a gray gell (e.g. applied to a plane) in front of the sun as a "neutral density filter". 2) Use one of the "Post Processing" controls you get by selecting the camera, right-clicking on it and choosing "Edit Object". There, you can adjust overall scene color, add a color bias, change gamma, etc.

"What strategies do people use with Vue to get good sunlight on foreground objects without excessive brightness?"

I haven't had problems with this. I use the "Light Intensity" control, in the Atmosphere Editor lighting tab, which (as you noted) can be applied to only the sun.

Since i can adjust the "Ambient Vs Sun" setting, the colors and gain of the sky and ambient and use the "Quality Boost" (at least for GA and GI lighting). I usually use 60% to 70% sunlight for the "Sun Vs Ambient" slider.

When you're not using Global Radiosity, indirect light reflections are faked by adding in a certain amount of ambient light to the whole scene. Perhaps this is what's giving you too much ambient? You could try turning down that "Artificial Ambience"?

_ jc...'Art Head Start' e-book
.......'Art Head Start.com site Digital Art skills. Free lighting chapter, tutes, Vue models, tex pix.

This is odd. I just did a second test of changing only the Luminosity of the sun light source in a scene and DID get a big hue shift. Yet an hour ago i did the same without a hue shift. Must have made a mistake in the first test, as i can't see anything wrong in this second test.

Incidentally, I've never really understood that "apply to all lights/apply to sunlight only" option, since the changes you make have an effect even if you select "apply to sunlight only" and have no sun in the scene.

The way i read the manual, there is no "don't apply to sun" option. The sun is always included - the option is just to apply to sun + other lights or sun only.

This option works for me "as advertised" in GI lighting. For example: Both a sun and a spotlight on a white sphere, using the "black sky" atmosphere, sun is white color in sun "Light & Shadow" settings, but green in "Light Color" of GI settings, spotlight is white.

If set for "Apply setting to all lights, spotlighed area turns green - now all of scene is green. If "Sun Only", sun lighted area is green and spot lighted is white. If i turn off sun ("Influence" in "Light & Shadow") there is no sun, no green and only white spotlight illumination.

Maybe you are seeing some atmosphere effect that is simulating a sun effect whether the sun is on or not? That's why i used the black atmosphere. Have not tried this with other atmospheres.

_ jc...'Art Head Start' e-book
.......'Art Head Start.com site Digital Art skills. Free lighting chapter, tutes, Vue models, tex pix.

Yes - for internal scenes I generally use the black atmosphere, turn off fog and haze, and delete the sun. This is with the standard lighting model. Now I'll add a point light so I can see what I'm doing. Now I will go into the atmosphere editor (declining the offer to create a new sun) and the lighting page. Change the sunlight/ambient balance to 80% sunlight. The lighting of all objects in the scene now goes down, despite the fact that "apply only to sun" is selected and there is no sun. I'm used to this by now, but it's weird all the same.

I've found a good solution to the problem of the sun being too bright - apply a plain grey gel to it. Adjusting the darkness of the grey controls the brightness of the sun, and it has no effect on the hue. Problem solved.