Moon Me if you musty but please skip the Camembert!

By Lee Hasch and Paul Pappathan
2006

Can you place the Moon just like you did the Sun? Do you have to start with a night Preset Sky? Can you have the Moon and the Sun both showing? Where exactly is the Moon?
_{Hey Lee, I told ya - the moon isn't real...it was a prop made for a movie about aliens who wanted to steal all the cheez whiz in the universe!}

Load up your default Sky Object, or the scene you downloaded, and let's get that Moon dancing to your tune!
_{Fly me too the moooooooon}

The first thing we have to do is get the Sun out of the scene, so we can see the Moon more clearly. Go to Plugins/Sky/Sky Manager, and under the Astro tab, select Sun from the drop-down menu, uncheck Auto, make sure Show is still checked, and move the Altitude to minus 90.

While we're here, click on the drop-down tab, and select Moon. Uncheck Auto, and make sure Show is checked. Change the Azimuth to 135 and the Altitude to 23, which should just about center it in the scene.

If you do a quick render now, you'll see a tiny little spot in the middle. We can fix that under the General tab of the Sky Manager. While we're in the General tab, let's take both the Lens Flare settings down to 0. We won't need them. At this time, set the Horizon Start to -10, so we have some room to work with where the Sky meets the horizon. Increase the Moon Distance Scale to 10%. Set the Moon Scale to 2300%: this is the setting that controls what you see. (Try setting it way up and see what happens!) If the stars are not showing, go to the Astro tab, and make sure Show Stars is checked.

General tab settings - What you should have so far

At this point, we can explore how to control the appearance of the Moon a little more. Still under the General tab, way down at the bottom, you'll see settings for Moon Bright and Dark. These terms can be a little misleading. If you think of them as ambience settings, they make sense. If you set both Moon Bright and Dark to 100%, it evens out the brightness, and it looks more like a full moon.

Bright 100% Dark 100%

Bright 100% Dark 50%

Bright 50% Dark 100%

So far we've made a night sky out of a daylight preset, moved the Moon where we want it, and discovered how to adjust the Moon's shine. Now let's put the Sun and Moon together.

Go back to the Sky Manager, and click on the Astro tab. We'll be moving the Moon a little to the side, and bringing the Sun back into the picture.

For the Sun, set the Azimuth to 170 and the Altitude to 30. This will put the Sun in the upper right corner of the image.

Place the Moon at Azimuth 110 and Altitude 22. This will put the Moon to the left and slightly lower than the Sun.

This is a quick render, with the Moon Brightness and Dark both set to 75% (in the General tab).

Experiment with the color of the Sun, the Moon Brightness and Dark and the Cloud layers to create some wonderful effects!

Next - Sunbeams.

Sky Tutorial Table of Contents