White Card Solar Study

[Jim Smith]

I can't seem to get a satisfactory White Card view in a Solar Study other than the render at noon. Morning & evening produce a ground plane that's dark grey.  This is using the Heliodon tool and even set to 100% I get the same result. OPEN GL doesn't produce shadows & a 2D poly as the ground plane doesn't show shadows Pumping the ambient light level up lightens the background somewhat but washes out the shadows. Any thoughts?

 

Solar Study at March 20, 12:00 - I would prefer this look on all the times of day.

 

 

 

Solar Study at March 20, 08:00, too dark a ground plane

 

Edited April 4, 2017 by Jim Smith

[PVA - Admin]

The Heliodon is designed to let the sun actually set when it's the only light source, fading to complete darkness. However for the artistic style you're going for, that isn't helpful.

You may be able to mitigate this easily by adding a Renderworks background, HDRI White in the list of defaults should do it and then in your render style make sure you have indirect lighting on and lighting enabled from your background, I THINK that will give you the clean white while still allowing the shadows to appear from sunrise to sunset. It may take some tweaking brightness values.

If that doesn't make sense, or doesn't seem to work, if you can post the file I can take a closer look.

[Jim Smith]

Thanks Jim, I should have mentioned that the setting is HDRI White; I'll play with this a little more to see what I find that's more to my requirement. Really I think what I want is an Open GL setting that lets me do this.

Edited April 4, 2017 by Jim Smith

[PVA - Admin]

For OpenGL You might get it if you just disable color entirely, enable and increase ambient lighting, but it'll be a balance between keeping the shadows and keeping the constant white light, since OpenGL doesn't benefit from Indirect lighting at all.

[rDesign]

@Jim Smith- maybe you could try a variation on Alan's suggestion in this other thread to create the White Card shadows:

 

[Jim Smith]

Thanks! I was just tinkering with doing the opposite- didn't work. So I'll try Alan's technique.

[Jim Smith]

Thanks Alan, this was what I was a look'n for!

[Matt Overton]

Try setting the Heliodon over 100% light and making sure there is no other light source. 

[Jim Smith]

... I'm always suspicious of hockey players who say they "Give 110%" so I was reluctant to set it higher than 100. 

 

Thanks I'll try it, perhaps they should have the nob go to 11