Here Comes the Sun!

Welcome to the first in a series of Sky tutorials for Cinema 4D by Paul Pappathan and Lee Hasch. Paul supplies a little expertise, idiocy and whatnot, Lee watches the light bulbs come out of Pinheads head and provides intelligent content.

_{Lee actually does much more but I can't convince her otherwise and I've leaned not to argue with smart ladies too much

Ok, I'm done for now - on with the blinding wisdumb.}

Unconventional Conventions are used in these serious Documents:
Normal language is used by Lee.

_{All stupid cracks and asides are made by Paul, Lee is not to be held responsible for his irresponsibility.

These tutorials were done via telephone, and with voice software in use by Paul.

Comments made by the pinheaded dope were stuck in after the fact. I hope Lee doesn't shoot me ; )}

Welcome to the first in a series of Sky tutorials for Cinema 4D by Paul Pappathan and Lee Hasch. Paul supplies a little expertise, idiocy and whatnot, Lee watches the light bulbs come out of Pinheads head and provides intelligent content.

_{Lee actually does much more but I can't convince her otherwise and I've leaned not to argue with smart ladies too much

Ok, I'm done for now - on with the blinding wisdumb.}

You'll need to have Cinema 4D R9.5 or higher with Advanced Render installed. For some reason, the default Sky in Lee's copy of Cinema does not update changes in real time. If you are having that problem, you can download a sky created for this tutorial, that will update here.

We're beginning with the Sun settings of the Sky plug-in, which Cinema added to the AR arsenal with R9.5. These tutorials are geared for still images, and supply the basic steps you'll need to create those killer skies for your images.

Where, oh where have the sun and moon gone?

Does this sound familiar? You open up a new scene, go to Plugins/Sky/Create Sky, and then search and search for the sun (or moon), so it will show in your render. Instead of searching, you can place the Sun just where you want it.

Start off, as usual, with a new scene, go to Perspective view, then Plugins/Sky/Create Sky. If you're using the Sky preset you downloaded, open that scene. The sun appears to be off somewhere to the left.

Now, go to Plugins/Sky/Sky Manager and click on the Astro tab.

	On the drop-down list, select Sun.
	Uncheck Auto, and enter 135 for the Azimuth, and 16 for the Altitude. The Sun should now be centered in your image. You'll have to rotate the view up and move the scene down to get the sky to fill your view port nicely. If you're having trouble seeing the exact placement of the sun, in the Sky Manager, click on the Clouds tab and switch off all the cloud layers.

Rendered with no clouds

Rendered will all cloud layers activated.

If your render with all cloud layers activated (even with a few terrains added), doesn't look quite like this, there are a couple of tweaks that need to be mentioned here.(As an aside, the "rays" you are seeing in this scene are not Sunbeams. They are a lens flare built into this particular default sun.)

First of all, under the Clouds tab, notice that the second knot on the Falloff gradient has been moved slightly to the left. This will, in effect, increase the Global contrast, and, more importantly for the image at hand, increase the haze or fog along the horizon.

_{Important Note: Make sure you have Custom Horizon and Custom Sun Color Selected-Checked as shown Below Right*}

Did you happen to get something like this when you rendered, with the end of the horizon showing?

Instead of adjusting your view or terrains, you can move the Horizon Start under the General tab from the default -2 to about -10 to correct the scene.

By moving the Azimuth (under Astro) to 145 and the Altitude to 23 (up), you'll see something similar to this.

By moving the Azimuth to 125, and the Altitude to 5, the results will be close to this.

Take some time to change the color of the Sun, and select the Cloud Layers to change the look of the image.

Here the Sun Color (found under the General tab) is changed to R 215, G 187, B 147. Only Cloud Layers 2 and 3 are used, with the color of Cloud Layer 2 changed to R 211, B 207, G 175.

*When using a custom sun color, or custom horizon, the sun will sometimes appear as a pinpoint of light - simply uncheck them if you want a large sun and vary the sky gradient color. When you don't want the sun directly visible in the scene simply move it with Azimuth and Altitude or use a scene camera.
Make a practice of placing a camera into your scene. Go to Objects > Scene > Camera and drop one in from perspective view. Use this camera rather than manipulating the scene to get what you want. Once you have a view you never ever want to lose, name the camera. Duplicate the camera, give it a new name and use it to continue experimenting.
Having a problem finding the marker for the sun in the scene? On the General tab there is a scroll widget named Sun Distance Scale. Reduce the value to about 2 - 3 and the sun light source will appear.

Now that we have the Sun behaving, let's move on to the Moon.

Skip ahead to Sunbeams.

Sky Tutorial Table of Contents