AGi32 includes a realistic sky dome in your daylight enabled renderings. The sky dome changes color slightly depending on the Weather Station data or the General Sky Condition selected, and includes a small sun image.
- The sky dome is used in for visualization purposes only; it does not affect your point-by-point calculations or surface luminances.
- The sky dome includes a virtual ground plane with 18% reflectance. The 18% reflectance value is derived from Eastman Kodak's average reflectance of exterior environments. Additional exterior surfaces may be added, including a ground plane specified by the user with an alternative reflectance (created using a Planar object). The virtual ground plane will not interfere with "real" surfaces; if a user-defined ground is specified, it will be used in place of the virtual ground plane in the areas it occupies.
- The sky and sun colors are fixed. Sky color will change with orientation and sky conditions (determined by Weather Station data or the General Sky Condition selected).
- The specified environment luminances and other settings (e.g., Exposure setting) may have a dramatic effect on the appearance of the sky dome. If the sky dome is overexposed, the variation in the sky dome luminance may not be visible. In general, it is best to select exposure based on daylight surfaces in the Display Properties dialog. If this is not possible, experiment with lowering the Exposure Setting to create more contrast in your images.
The sky dome is automatically positioned and sized. It is centered over the extents of the environment with base at Z=0. The radius of the sky dome is 5 times the extents of the environment. In order to accommodate the Sky Dome, the back clipping plane has been moved to 100,000 to ensure that the sky dome is not clipped. It is possible in very large environments that this distance may need to be increased.
The appearance of the sky dome when Perez All-Weather is selected for the Sky Condition will depend on the weather station data for that date and time.
The images below show the sky dome for each IES and CIE General Sky Type available for selection.
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Sky Dome images for IES and CIE Sky Conditions |
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