i have a map which is HUGE and has a roof, so its harder to work with. when i add a sun lamp, it barely lights anything at all, and basically affects only the outside of the map, and not the interior. putting a spot lamp with a strength of 1000 works better, but i wanted the sun to affect the map to, so that i can have a dim light all over the scene. any way i can light the interior with the sun?
The sun, like a real sun, will be outside. A spotlight will be where ever you put it.
One way to cheat this would be to have an object (like, for example - your roof) not cast a shadow, letting light into the room. You can go into object settings - Cycles settings - and turn off shadow.
The sun is working as it is supposed to be. The sun is like a huge and powerful lantern, it hits the surface, but it’s doesn’t reach the inside of the houses and buildings with the same intensity. Our eyes balance the light in the inside and on the outside environments, which makes us to believe the intensity of the light in both environments is the same, which is incorrect. There is a tremendously difference between the intensity of the light.
In order to light the interiors, try to use the ambient occlusion effect combined with the sun. You can use the AO to create this soft, dim light in the interiors and one most intense light (of the sun) in the outside.
Yes it does, at least the real sun. Unless it is mighty foggy or dusty in there. Bouncing of light will vary of course. What varies most is the skylight - close to opening you’ll get a lot more light from the hemisphere. Far away from the opening you’ll get a narrow cone.
Iirc correctly, the default exposure of 0 is suitable for office lighting (in Photographer addon terms).
If the sun varies it would be dirty windows dispersing the rays. If a pure opening the sun rays would remain parallel (and thus intensity would be the same). Please correct me if I’m wrong.
Lamp strength for point, spot and area lamps is specified in Watts. This means you typically need higher values than Blender Internal, as you could not use a 1W lamp to light a room; you need something stronger like a 100W lamp.
Sun lamps are specified in Watts/m2, which require much smaller values like 1 W/m2. This can be confusing, but specifying strength in Watts would not have been convenient; the real sun for example has strength 384.6×1024W. Emission shaders on meshes are also in Watts/m2.
https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/dev/render/cycles/nodes/types/shaders/emission.html
first off, sorry, i said point lamp when i ment to type spot lamp.
thank you guys for the info on the sun light
my spot lamp strength was at 1000, so thats why i tried the sun. that ambient occlusion thing mentioned works exactly how i wanted the scene to be lit up, so, problem solved, thank you all for the help