I remember watching one of Mark's tutorials on how to render a scene in the sky, of flying airplanes. There was a trick he used so that the background of a scene would only show the clouds of the realistic sky and not that murky brownish-grey ground colour. Does anyone remember how to do that?

I've switched off the ground plane in this render, but the clouds seem to start much higher up, and all I get for background is this ugly brown.

Hi Versluis,

In the atmosphere setting tray, before you open the editor, there is a setting for ground color. That's the one to set. You can also reduce the haze density in the sky editor.

Mark! Thank you :-) How are you?

I've tried that, but the colour only appears to apply when I'm using the ground plane. When you switch that off (like I have), I still get a murky brown. I've tried to move all elements further up in the scene, but that didn't work either. Ideally I'd like to see the clouds of the realistic sky in the background. Can that be done?

You'll need to reduce the density of the Haze. It's mathematically reproducing an atmospheric phenomenon called Turbidity. Reducing the density will fix that.

Additionally, turn off the cloud layer. That will also help. Still want clouds in the background? You can add photographic clouds while simultaneously using Realistic Sky by using the background option and a spherical sky texture map. That way you can use Carrara's atmospherics to blend in the photographic texture.

Good tip, thanks ! I used to get down the horizon (- 1000 to -3000meters) but your solution seems to be better.

Great, thanks! About the spherical sky texture map: where to I add that, and does it have to be a HDRI or can it be a standard image?

It can be a standard map. As mentioned earlier, it goes in the background function of the scenes tab.