2 years, still don't understand Moon, horizon height works

Mistara

i thought if i could see the moon wire frame in the production frame it would show in render?
when i turn the moon trackball it changes direction of moonlight icon in scene.

? thanks  

turned off the clouds in case was hiding. checked phase wasnt set to new moon.
wanted moonlight to show on realistic seas (tropical).  

it would be kewl to wrap the sea shader on a sphere to make a water planet  2 or 3 moons

evilproducer

Don't worry, you're not going batty, and the Realistic Sky Editor isn't broken. See below for my theory:

The moon is set pretty close to the horizon. If you're using Phil's Realistic Seas product, I believe it uses a terrain for the ocean. If this is the case, the terrain's preview resolution could be set lower than the rendered resolution. In the 3D view, it could look like the moon wireframe is higher than the ocean/terrain, but in reality, it could be lower than the ocean/terrain.

The solution could be pretty simple. Select the ocean object, and then the wrench icon to open the terrain editor and on the right side of the screen change the Preview resolution to match the Rendered resolution.

The other possibility is that there is displacement displacing the mesh.

MarkIsSleepy

I think evil's suggestion is probably it, but also double check that "show the moon" is checked in the realistic sky settings.  It sometimes comes unchecked for me.

EDIT: nevermind - I see in your screenshot that it is checked.

Mistara

thanks.

yeah, is Phil's product. had to change display 'mesh' to display 'bounding box'  was killing my preview window, couldn't move the camra

renders pretty realistic, liking the product.

Mistara

found an eclipse/moon preset.  i turned off the ground, but a ground is still rendering.

skylight isn't checked on in render settings, can still see the sun and moon.  had mistaken idea could only see moon/sun if skylight was checked >.<  

to get really crazy, what about setting up a planet with a few moons, all the moons wouldn't be in the same phases?

a planet with a spot light behind it, mebbe?

are there more displacement brushes out there? mebbe can brush moon craters