how to make the sky presets work?

Mistara · December 2014

i'm trying to apply the 'blood moon' one

dbl click doesn't work. tried to drag it over where it says scene on the instances tab.

:down:

i see how to use the wizard to start a sky/terrain scene,
but i want to be able to make changes to my choices without starting over :-S

thanks!

evilproducer · December 2014

Misty Whisky said:
i'm trying to apply the 'blood moon' one
dbl click doesn't work. tried to drag it over where it says scene on the instances tab.

:down:

i see how to use the wizard to start a sky/terrain scene,
but i want to be able to make changes to my choices without starting over :-S

thanks!

I tried to find that one under the Misc. tab in the Browser and it wasn't there, so then I tried to load it manually from the Presets icon under Atmosphere which is under the Effects tab when Scene is selected in the Instances palette on the right side of the screen and I couldn't find it.

After all that, I loaded the Blood Moon sky from the Scenes tab in the file browser. It is under the Sky directory. I then switched to the Misc. tab in the file Browser and chose the Sky directory.

Next, in the instances palette, I select Scene, and above, in the Effects tab, I clicked in the field below the Atmosphere heading. Not the darker title bar with the name, but in the gray field below it with the sliders. I clicked and dragged it to the Sky directory. A dialogue box opened asking me to name the file. I named it and clicked OK. A new thumbnail with a generic icon appeared in the browser.

There are a couple ways to use the newly saved file, open the scene that you had started beforehand (the one where you wanted to change the sky).

The easiest is to select Scene in the Instances palette and then under the Effects tab, click the Presets icon and a window will open with the skies that are included in the Misc. tab of the browser. Select the one you want and click OK.

Or, you could select the appropriate directory under the Misc. tab of the browser and with the Scene's effects tab selected, drag and drop the icon from the browser onto the Atmosphere section. If there is no sky added to the atmosphere yet, just drop the icon onto the word, Atmosphere.

A note about the skies, is that they act like IBLs (Image Based Lights). Kind of like and HDRI. To get the effect, you would want to enable Skylight in the Render Room.

To use actual HDRIs, you would load them into the Background slot under the scene's effects tab. In fact, anything in that slot will act as an IBL, whether it is the standard HDRI, a color, color gradient or image (map), just as long as the Skylight is enabled. Anything in that slot will also reflect on objects in the scene if they have a reflective shader. It is best to use spherical images (maps) or HDRIs since they wrap completely around the virtual universe.

Mistara · December 2014

thanks. under that edit button i see the track balls for the sun and moon.

and a rainbow.
and auras

evilproducer · December 2014

There is a lot to learn, but it seems as if you enjoy a challenge! Don't forget, there are lots of folks here that want to see people new to Carrara succeed! Don't hesitate if you have a question or need a little more detail on a subject!

The Carrara Cafe is great resource as well. There are tons of tutorials in many formats.
http://carraracafe.com/category/tutorials/
They were just hacked, so they are still trying to recover from that, so there may be areas that are a bit flaky, but it looked the tutorial area was okay.

Roygee · December 2014

Here's a tip 3dage gave me - the blood moon is one of those skies that is a scene. To get it loaded into an existing scene, double-click. It opens a new scene. Click on "Scene" in the instance panel and look next to Atmosphere - there are three tiny blocks. (I had to click on Maximise to be able to see all three) Click on "Save Component" - that is the middle one. Save the .cbr somewhere temporary. Close the scene and go to your original scene and click on the third icon "Load Component" . Navigate to the saved .cbr and Viola!

evilproducer · December 2014

Thanks Roygee! There are many ways to to get things done!

Roygee · December 2014

Aren't there just!

This is also a handy method if you get your sky all sorted then find you have to get rid of it to do an alpha render - save the sky as .cbr, set it to none in the scene, then bring it back as it was :)

Diomede · December 2014

Roygee said:
Here's a tip 3dage gave me - the blood moon is one of those skies that is a scene. To get it loaded into an existing scene, double-click. It opens a new scene. Click on "Scene" in the instance panel and look next to Atmosphere - there are three tiny blocks. (I had to click on Maximise to be able to see all three) Click on "Save Component" - that is the middle one. Save the .cbr somewhere temporary. Close the scene and go to your original scene and click on the third icon "Load Component" . Navigate to the saved .cbr and Viola!

Thanks, Roygee! Never thought of that, but now it seems obvious.

Mistara · December 2014

thanks!!! can't wait to try it.

evilproducer · December 2014

Roygee said:
Aren't there just!
This is also a handy method if you get your sky all sorted then find you have to get rid of it to do an alpha render - save the sky as .cbr, set it to none in the scene, then bring it back as it was :)

I have used the sky and successfully rendered an Alpha (straight, not pre-multiplied) without being visible. I haven't used a cloud layer though, so I don't know if that, or the sun disk would be visible.