FROM THE COMMUNITY COLLECTION
Red Moon hdr.
Created by davidbrinnen
Horo, unintentionally I suspect, set me this challenge. He stated <<Whether the red moon is of any serious use remains to be seen>> with respect to his red moon hdr - you may gather. And I thought, hmn... well, what can be done with a red moon? - tricky... so here is an answer. The idea was mostly to play with the IBL, the models are from DAZ. The terrains and ground that are visible, do not cast shadows, there is another ground plane out of sight under the ground that is set to let through some light from the rest of the hdr under the horizon, this is intended to simulated light which has been scattered after hitting the lightly coloured packed sand which acts as the landing pad for the helicopters. Beacuse the aircraft cast a significant shadow, eliptical spheres were placed under them to stop too much light underlighting them directly through the floor. The ground had to be quite green to compensate for the redness of the hdr ambient light. The sun is white and a secondary yellowish lightsrouce has been slipped in to pick up the specularity in the helicopter materals (as IBL does not stimulate specular response to any significant degree). Also, to give the sun an extra "burned out" appearnce I added a plane of "glass" between the mountains and the helicopters, it has altitude sensitive bump to add a heat haze effect and also specularity (yellow) which flares between the sun and the camera giving it a bight fuzzy halo that polutes the sky with a diffuse golden haze. Render time was about eight hours, minimum quality on hdr, 100 intensity and 15 effect. The biggest issue that I am aware of, is that the shadows of the helicopers formed by the hdr appear green tinted - but otherwise the ground would have had to be pink. Also probably there is some rule about helicopters of that design not being allowed to be that colour... I wouldn't know.
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interesting This notion of disabling shadows of floor covering models in order to allow the .hdr to illuminate the scene from below is a very important concept. I feel that the hills in the background would look much different if they casted shadows, at least self shadows. I wish there was a way to have both effects. I also like the technique of the glass in between the copters and the mountains to add that heat wave effect. I feel that the tail end of the copter on the right is unnatrually bright. Is this from the .hdr? Anyway these sorts of experiments are very valuable to us all. Thanks for this.