So you get the shadows ONLY from the sun light. (You can’t get shadows from the environment light, even after baking in EEVEE). Try it: turn down sunlight and up the environment light and bake: where are the shadows? So in this case: the sun lines up with the brightest spot in the environment light, and so you have shadows. Not a perfect solution but that’s how it is with EEVEE. (In cycles you DO get shadows from environment light, and therefore more accurate when using this addon).
Here a list of limitations of volumetrics in EEVEE:
Only single scattering is supported.
Volumetrics are rendered only for the camera “rays”. They don’t appear in reflections/refractions and probes.
Volumetrics don’t receive light from Irradiance Volumes but does receive world’s diffuse lighting.
Volumetric shadowing does only work on other volumetrics. They won’t cast shadows on solid objects in the scene.
Volumetric shadowing does only work for volumes inside the view frustum.
Volumetric lighting does not respect the lights shapes. They are treated as point lights.
Therefore, I wonder if the you get the same realism of fog (the benefits of this addon is the superior realism and quality of the procedural sky) in EEVEE and Cycles.
Or is it that you notice one of the limitations mentioned here above, when you compare this addon in EEVEE and Cycles?
In my understanding, this add on is not based on volumetrics. Author can tell details but I ASSUME that there is:
A nodegroup that is put to materials as replacement to Material output to simulate scattering by adding emission based on distance and altitude (exponential falloff)
Or
Similar method as “Fog pass”, where you select objects are rendered calculating emission shader that calculates amount of fog, and combine that mist pass. Also thinner atmosphere in high altitude can be simulated by adjusting luminance.
I’ve tried both “fake” methods and also draw sky with real scattering and they work similarly both Eevee and Cycles. Eevee has just simplified scattering model so you need background to get reflections right.
And the fake methods doesn’t give any real scattering. Only how surfaces and background are drawn. Fake methods also need manual work but add on can automate things. I don’t know how much this add on automate.
I just commenting based on how I understand Blender internals, I don’t own add on but I’m interested physical approaches.
There is shadows seen in videos, so I’m sure that the model uses light source.
Sun is just reflection in Eevee… No shadow. Perhaps it is something you can swich on or off. I’m sure that the sky is in background so real lights can be made to eevee using baking them in cycles.
Hey, sorry for not getting back to you.
Well, the way how I set up the lighting in Physical Starlight and Atmosphere is not that straightforward like others might think. Because I want the shader to work in offline and real-time renderers (e.g. Eevee and Cycles), I had to make a hybrid approach.
So, yes, indeed Eevee does not produce shadows from HDRIs, it works more like an environment map. To get shadows from HDRI in Eevee, you would need to use a rather dense Irradiance volume, or, more effectively - use a parametric Sun Lamp.
On the other hand Cycles is a raytracer and you naturally get shadows casted from every pixel of the sky so Sun Lamp is not necessary.
What Physical Starlight and Atmosphere does is - allows user to define if you want to use Sun Lamp or not. In Cycles it does not matter at all, you get identical results (see screenshots below)
In Eevee it looks rather different.
This is why Sun Controls have “Sun Disk” and “Sun Lamp” variables
“Sun Disk” toggles a disk in the sky that is extremely bright and acts as a HDRI light source
“Sun Lamp” toggles parametric Sun Lamp visibility.
If both variables are enabled - Sun Disk intensity is lowered to much lower value, so it does not double the sunlight exposure.
Cycles: (sorry for noisy renders, I`m on old two core laptop with integrated Intel GPU)
I hope this clarifies how sunlight is dealt with in the addon. Documentation touches the topic a little, but I will include there what I wrote here too.
Thanks for the extensive reply.
Where are the shadows from in the last render EEVEE only sky? Is that ambient occlusion?
The “Only sky” renders look quite different (ofcourse, with two different render engines), but it’s just that I am a bit scared to use “Only Sky” (environment light, right?) in EEVEE. Because, it seems to me, you are using Ambient Occlussion to fix that environment light is not casting shadows in EEVEE.
Could that be correct? If so, I hope in the future that will be fixed by Blender developers.
yup,
mix it with a baked irradiance volume for better results in Eevee. As I said, Eevee is a real-time rendering engine and those use a lot of trickery and ‘fakery’ to fool the viewer.
GI (global illumination) is on the top of the list of the most challenging problems in real-time rendering world. RIght now SSGI and baked irradiance (voxel) volume is closest we have to the real raytraced GI.
Wait few more years where RTX is standard and no more faking will be necessary
I don’t think there is other solution for Eevee environment shadows than bake them with Cycles or using ambient occulsion. Eevee just works similarly than real time rendering.
It’s already explained, but I wanted to make clear that when we are talking about “baking” in eevee we mean creating an irradiance probe and baking indirect light.
Here’s an example, no sun lamp and baked indirect light with am accurately placed irradiance volume.
Thanks,
I am developer of EV Express where one of the most important step is to bake indirect light. Without irradiance volume, no indirect light. To get optimal indiect light, what is in view (in EV Express), needs to be enclosed by geometry ( cube like), so the light can bounce. When its open air, and you have some light, its like you have some lights in dark space. And so that will affect quality of indiect light. (no geometry means there is nothing to bounce). Therefore I dont use sunlight, because Sunlight doesnt have location. Only direction. Meaning (in EV Express), you cant place sunlight inside the geometry that is used for the indirect light bounces). Thats why , In my case I am hesitant with sunlight and envirinment light. I dont need AO to make shadows this way.
Major issue to make scene depend that it work without sunlight is HDRI images very often ignores sun. Sun can be in Blender over 1000W very tiny object. And that doesn’t light anything, mayby add noise if ray hits there. Try to put 1000W emissive sphere 1000m away with diameter less than 1m, then you see the physics.
There is two method to bake light, one is to irradiance volume and other is just bake diffuse light in cycles. This is going to off topic, so I will create test scene and bake light using both methods so we can compare results.
AO works when need to add detail that is missing from bake or shadow some dynamic things that is not baked.
Edit:
Eevee indirect bake fails if I light environment entirely using background and move camera inside some structure or cave. It kind of expect to have own HDRI for inside.
Baking diffuse with cycles solves that and indirect light bake can be used to bake the envronment so moving objects get global illumination from environment.
Hello, first I would like to thank you very much for the addon, it is wonderful.
I have a question, how can I get god rays without having to use volumetric.
and, otherwise, how should I configure the volumes to look good? like this
and, another thing, the link for the forum is incorrect in blender market, it redirects you to a page that does not exist
Does anyone knows wow I can combine this with an hdri? That’s the best of both world for me. Using this for sun disk position, light and atmosphere while matching my hdri.
