sun lamp inside mesh

Support Materials and Textures
1

Hi all:

I’m working on a sky dome using the UVsphere approach, this is, to paint a sky in the inner surface of half of a UV sphere. But I’m having a problem with sun lamps. They dont seem to work in the same way as out of the UV sphere. Actually they dont spread any light at all. Is it that I’m doing something wrong?

Thanks in advance.

www.enriquesahagun.es

2

For the skydome material under the Render Pipeline panel, disable Traceable. In the Material panel, enable Shadeless.

3

The sun is a special lamp type, it does not matter where you put it in the scene, only which way it is oriented.

For sky domes, just use Blenders Ambient Occlusion with a world setting using an angular map.

I am attaching a ring light I made a while ago. It dupliverts lamp along a circle. Feel free to substitute a sphere or hemisphere to make your sky dome.

Attachments

ras_Ring_Light.blend (128 KB)

4

Hi Atom:

Thanks a lot for your help. I think I’m starting to understand how sun works and whats the problem in my scene.

The thing is that I need a really huge space for my animation, and I dont know if the sky dome approach (with a sphere) is going to be OK. For me it would be better to texture the world in the way I want. I’m starting to think of world+texture+nodes… lets see what happens.

5

Don’t forget about angular maps, they can simplify world texturing and look great.

http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?t=24038&highlight=angular+sky

6

Old topic, I know… but it’s the first thing that comes up on Google for this issue…

Here’s a handy way to make the Sun Lamp work inside an enclosed mesh!

  1. Use Vertex Paint to paint your mesh white where you want light to come through.
  2. Multiply the Light Path (Node) > Is Shadow Ray output with the Color Attribute Node output (or “Attribute Node” for older versions).
  3. Use the result to mix in a Transparent Shader.

(tldr; Essentially, we’re making a sunroof that only allows Shadow Rays to pass through.)

Vertex Paint Sunroof
Hope this helps any passersby! ^.^ Peace and God bless!

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