How Do I Get Shadows With The Sun?
Fauvist
Posts: 2,151
I'm in RENDER SETTINGS, and Envionment Mode is at Sun-Sky Only. Dome Mode is Infinite Sphere. Draw Dome is OFF. So the sunlight floods the scene. But there are no shadows. Well, there are faint shadows from large objects, like walls, but if a box of cereal is sitting on the table, and the sun is shining down at a 45' angle or whatever it is, there's no shadow cast by the cereal box. I don't have any lights in the scene. The headlights on the camera are turned off. I also thought there was supposed to be a setrting for Ray-Traced or Depth Mapped shadows somewhere, but I can't find it. What good is the sun without the shadows? It looks 100% artificial. How do I get natural looking shadows from the sun?
Thanks!
Daz 3D is part of 
Connect
DAZ Productions, Inc.
7533 S Center View Ct #4664
West Jordan, UT 84084
Licensing Agreement | Terms of Service | Privacy Policy | EULA
© 2025 Daz Productions Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Comments
Is "Draw Ground" switched to "ON" in the Environment settings?
Play with the date and time: by default, it's sometime in March around 6PM. If the shadows are not cast in the direction you want, then play with the dome rotation.
A couple of renders done with the sun & sky only from my gallery.
I'm using a preset from Martin J Frost for the Sun & Sky system in Pool Portrait (raw coloured render in the gallery, but the b&w version shows shadows):
In Peaceful birds, it's the sun & sky system with a couple of ghost lights:
I'm using a trick learned from Jay Versluis in A treasured memory and I removed the default HDRI to use the sun & sky system with functionning spot lights:
And I'm sure I have other renders on my gallery with the Sun & Sky system used (if they are no HDRI listed either as a freebie or as a paid product, it's likely the sun & sky system): it's a great tool and you can do a lot with it.
The main limitation is non functionning spot lights by defaut, but if you're using Jay Versluis's trick of removing the default HDRI (and I think that Daz recently fixed the annoying bug where at the opening of the scene, Daz Studio would force the default HDRI back, instead of respecting its removal), you'll get them back.
Thanks for trying to help. "Draw Ground" was switched to OFF. I switched it to on, but no shadows showed up in the render. Although, you can't see the actual ground, you see the floor of a room with the front wall and roof removed so the sun can shine in.
OH, I just noticed that I think the sun is shining toward the back of the walls, instead of in the front of the room where I removed the wall. How do I change the position of the sun?
You can either spin the prop or the Dome, or both. If the Dome then spin it in 30 dgree intervals until you get the shadows you want.
The sun in the scene tab you are seeing is a distant light (I am guessing), not the sun cast by the sun-sky render setting. To change the direction of that you need to select it on the camera list and then manipulate it shine in the direction you want.
I don't know, spinning the dome had no effect. I had to rotate the actual sun. Anyway, I decided to use a spotlight that I can control better, and the shadows better. Thanks though.
Spinning the Dome would have worked if you had been using it for the Sun but you had a Distant Light loaded too.Spinning the lightto the front and facing the open wall would have worked, or spinning the room to point the open wall at the Distant Light.
there are a ton of settings for the sun-sky deal...you can also adjust the shadow intensity as shown here. This image has low sun angle, but you can adjust latitude or longitude to bring it where you want it, or by adjusting the time and date. The dome rotation will also do it, but only in the horizontal direction. The best way it to experiment ... place the working window into Iray preview mode..then slowly adjust lat itude/longitude and watch the brightness change in the scene. It takes a bit of time to get the feel for it.
Ah, light. Our best friend and greatest enemy. I agree with Daveso's approach to slowly tweak it in Iray. I've had to rotate domes by single digit degrees, translate on coordinates before I got it just right. My render here is an example of having to keep it in Iray and little by little just move that dome until I got it where I wanted it.
This, you're not actually manipulating anything because the "Sun" in this case is a distant light that someone marked as the "sun". Under render settings and presets there should be a sun dial widget you can load. This will let you move the sun around as an object with the sun-sky render setting.
...yes, I use the Sun Dial regularly when working with the Iray Sun-Sky setting rather than the time/location plotting. So much simpler.