The Basic Sky
Persona Non Grata
Posts: 1,365
Just thought I'd have a look at the basic sky in Carrara.
I'm not talking about the "Realistic Sky option" (supposedly it's bigger, brighter cousin), just the basic sky one... I'm exploring the questions; What can you do with it? Has it been superseeded by it's bigger cousin?
Interested? Read on...
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Let's start with a basic Sky set up...
BASIC 01
Sky Colour: HLS - 58%, 50%, 100% (Blue)
Ground Colour: HLS - 8%, 20%, 10%
Haze Colour: HLS - 0%, 70%, 0%
Cloud Colour: HLS - 0%, 85%, 0%
Finally the scene with these basic sky settings...
Setting the mood...
BASIC 02
Sun Colour: HLS - 16.67%, 85, 50%
Aura Colour: HLS - 8.33%, 75%, 75%
The scene with the sun showing. You can move the sun around by clicking and dragging the centre dot of the cookie cutter shape provided it is...
Adding a light flare...
Light Glow Color: HSL - 0%, 100%, 0%
Light Glow Glow: HSL - 0%, 90%, 0%
Light Glow Inner: HSL - 8.33%, 60%, 5%
Light Glow Outer: HSL - 8.33%, 20%, 50%
Finally the scene with these updated basic sky settings...
A small aside...
Here's the cookie cutter... Click and drag the centre dot to move it about in your scene, clicking the other dot at the end of the line will turn the sky from day to night and vice a versa!
The height of the cloud planes are a percentage of the overall height of the sky as set here...
The camera in the Sky 'Lab' is pointing to the West - the default scene has the camera pointing to the NorthWest so if you see a beautiful cloud formation that you like then you will need to rotate either your camera (and whole scene) or the cloud plane - 45 degrees (ie 315 degrees as shown)
Finally the scene with these updates for illustrative purposes...
Just for the fun of it... adding a second cloud layer
Sky Colour: HSL - 58%, 25%, 95%
Cloud Colour: HSL - 16.67%, 80%, 100%
Finally the scene with these updates for the fun of it...
Great info, thank you.
I never explored the basic sky because I wrongly assumed that realistic must be better than basic. You have demonstrated that the basic sky can deliver excellent results, depending on the goal.
I will have to check it out more.
I used to use it a lot, still do if I use sky which I don't often in native renders (gradient and volumetric clouds being my preference)
is faster to render than the so called realistic one
the horizon default is silly though, I always add zeros to the values each direction
Thanks Diomede
Further radical experimentation...
Sky Colour: HLS - 38%, 15%, 75%
Aura Colour: HLS - 88%, 75%, 75%
Increasing cloud cover...
Cloud Colour: HLS - 96%, 80% 100%
Finally the scene with adjustments...
@FENgari - wow - you've made that basic sky sing, with the light flares, cloud planes and all. I use the Octane Render plug-in to render, so always stick with the realistic sky as a time reference, but I wish I'd seen this tutorial back in the days when I used Carrara's native renderer, those techniques would have bumped up the scene quality for sure.
Thanks Sci Fi Funk on Youtube!
..And there's more!
I've never used the rainbow feature as I could never position it exactly where I wanted it... till now that is! The secret? Just use a second camera and point it in the opposite direction to your main one and pull the cookie cutter to where it needs to go now that you can see it.
Sky Colour: HLS - 60%, 5%, 75%
Ground Colour: HLS - 10%, 20%, 10%
Haze Colour: HLS - 0%, 25%, 0%
Clouds Color: HLS - 60%, 40%, 25%
Clouds Color: HLS - 60%, 50%, 15%
Add yet another cloud layer (you can add up to 4)
Clouds Color: HLS - 60%, 60%, 50%
Finally, the scene with rainbow...
one does the rainbows, the other one does the god rays. sun beams
Fantastic!!!
Love the rainbows. 
I use it a lot whilst building a landscape scene, but unless I have a shedload of trees, the horizon ground thingy drives me nuts.
@FENgari - pushing those limits. Fantastic mate.
1 trick i like to do to cover the 'ground' put down an infinite plane and put reflection on it
Infinite plane I get. What texture do you use or just use the glass 'mirror' shader? I used to just use fogs and atmospherics, but they take up too much render time now.
Just for the fun of it...
How about this one...
These are stunning. I seem to have a problem. I can't get any atmospherics to show in Basic Sky. No clouds, no haze, I just get a plain blue no matter what I do. I even opened a blank scene, stuck a terrain in and tried to follow your steps. Realistic Sky works fine, but nothing with Basic Sky. Am I missing something before you open Basic Sky in Atmosphere. And under Ambient, do you leave that at Basic or change to Sky? Tried both. Might be something missing in my menu, but the renders in the Edit dialogue box look right. Just not in my scenes. Plain blue all the way.
the reflection shader in the shader wizard.
no matter how many miles of lowering horizon, is still there.
Thanks, Misty. Trying to get clouds etc in the sky, something's not working in my scene. Not sure if it's distance or what. Looking now and tyring to cook Sunday Lunch/Dinner.
ETA: If I change the sunlinght, the effect on the terrain is evident and looks just like it should. EG, a red sunset. It's just the sky that stays plain blue.
And haze works... I can see the effect on the terrain. Weird!
is kewl how easy it is to animate the clouds moving
is harder to point the camera so the moon is in the shot
Sorry to hear you're not having much fun with the sky 'lab' ... here's a simple scene and image try it and see if you get the same result. It was created in Carrara Pro 8.5.1 (build 19)
Using the infini plane 'trick' ...
interesting ripples composition, makes me feel contemplative
Thanks!! It opened as a small scene the way you sent it and it rendered in Carrara just as in the dialogue box. But attached is what I got for a render when I copied all the settings into my scene. (Everything LOOKS right but renders wrongly). I also changed the plane of my terrain to rest on the x axis properly so you could see it. It is in a medium scene. I am totally confused. I must have something in the scene that is interfering. I was afraid I had a Carrara tool file missing or something that kept me from making clouds in Basic Sky, but the sky IS there. You can tell from the water reflection of the botched render, and in the shader room image using the infinite plane to reflect. it is there as a reflected sky! I just cannot see it in a spot or normal render!
I have to do some invoices for tomorrow, but will leave it and maybe you or someone can figure it out. I can make skies that render using Realistic Sky, and the presets that came with Carrara as well. Just not Basic Sky. Never noticed it before as I just use the plain blue when building landscapes, then I make backgrounds etc. But I liked what you did with Basic Sky and want to try it in my workflow. Hmmm. Sorry to be trouble... it's a great tut!!
Okay - simple fix the height (Maximum Altitude) is too low for your scene you will need to increase it... As you have it the cloud plane is sitting way down below the camera and that's why you get a blue background (the sky) and white patchy floor (this is the cloud plane.) Hope that helps :)
How to move the moon to where you want it - easy when you know a trick or two...
You can see the sunlight - so add one of those and move it where you want it then... change it to a moon light, make sure the moon section is turned to night and it will appear where the sun was!
Well, DOH?
I was only raising it by 10-20 metres or so messing around and of course it made no difference. Had to go to 200 metres!
Thanks so much!
I warned about that earlier adding zeros
as in more than one
should have mentioned a -minus sign as well for below
Very nice!
Say, that cookie cutter should also be able to be controlled/aimed simply by rotating the Sun and/or Moon light around. That's how I do it is Realistic Sky. The trick is, you won't see the cookie cutter unless the light is aimed correctly, but it helps that we can then rotate it back for the rainbow.
Wendy, I was so distracted that I wasn't taking in some of Misty's and your comments.(It's tax self-assessment deadline time). I thought more zeros meant decimally, so I did that to get some fractional changes. One benefit for doing that was I can better manage the waves on my water and nudging my terrain layers that I use to create surface replicators which is a whole new bundle of fun I have discovered.