Hi all,
Is it possible to get the color of the sun for any Nishita sky texture configurations? I’m using area lamps to enhance the lighting on the scene but would like to know the exact color the sun lamp is using.
It’s not a problem to eye ball it but I’m just curious to see if there’s a way to get the exact colour
Regards,
Tim
The short answer is white. 
Long answer- it would be whatever the observed color of sunlight is, at your levels of gamma and exposure. Sunlight is white, the sun emits the full spectrum, and the yellowish tint we see is due to our atmosphere. This tint changes based on atmospheric density, which in turn is based on altitude. So, it’s white adjusted for whatever atmospheric parameters you have.
If you prefer a less accurate answer, you can always use Kelvins:
Thank you for the quick response!
So Nishita sky also starts with a white sun and modifies it based on the the Air/Dust/Ozone values? Does blender internally calculate a color value based on these parameters and is it possible to expose it?
As the chart mentions, at noon it’s pure white, other times of the day it’s closer to 4500K. Either way, you can’t directly convert light emission to color - but you can use a Blackbody node to approximate it in Blender
Ok! I’ve already approximated the color for the area lamps but I’ve never tried the blackbody node before. Let me try it for the fun of it!
Thank you the explanation!
I use Nishita sky only, with a separate sun lamp, in order to put each of them on a separate Light Group. Using a mirror ball I can orient the sun to match Nishita, and using a white interior dummy I can adjust the suns Blackbody until it matches the result of Nishita. If I had to do an actual solar study, I’d leave it up to Nishita. All other interior lights (I do office spaces) use mainly 3200K-4000K (3200K if I don’t have data) for main lighting and 2700K for “cozy warm lighting” since we tend to go that low here at northern latitudes.
Then I render out a space which contain some level of “neutral white” that I want to neutralize for, grab the color into a MixRGB, put s slightly desaturated version in the second slot, and copy the RGB values into the white balance curve in color management. Some shots may be cooler, other warmer, depending on lighting situation in that room. But the shots appear to have a consistent WB setting. I also neutralize monitors and so on using this color so that their white appear white despite my WB color management curve setting.