Lighting Decisions

For the lighting in my scene, I have been using the Daylight System that we learnt about when starting to use Metal Ray Rendering. I have chosen to use the daylight system to make the lighting in the scene look as realistic as possible, and also because the country can be selected, as well as the month, year and time of day. I have selected Venice, Italy as my location purely because it is the closest city on the map to Florence, Italy, where my scene is set. I have chosen 08/08/2011 as my date and 13:30 as my time, when the sun should be at a high point.

The compass and the light have been moved so that maximum light is available for my scene. The light source is virtually directly above the city due to the time of day, and it is aiming inwards, so that the lighting will be behind the camera, which is one of the main rules when photographing and filming locations. This will be the right angle for virtually all of my camera shots.

This is the resulting render from using the daylight system, but with metal ray sunlights and skylights chosen. A sky has been added into the background as well as a floor for the surrounding area, but I am still unsure if the render for this particular setting shows the right tones and enough detail. I prefer what it looks like before the render more so than the render itself.

Using the standard sunlight and skylight settings produces the above render result. The tones and textures of the buildings are a lot closer to the original than the metal ray rendering, so it is more likely that I will be using this instead. The shadows may need to be adjusted slightly so that they are not quite so intense, but this render definitely is more of the result that I am looking for.