Scorching Sun from the Valleys

I completed another set of tests I have begun earlier this month to occupy my brains while I skip reality during my mini hangover (kids, cheap booze is bad for you).

The sun and sky were an issue for the planning of some comics because they can make a comic look cheap or weird, but the lack of control or bad lights forces you to fix it with extra lights.

The older iray dome is dead and won't return, rest assured, BUT I've learned with it and I'm using its knowledge to improve the actual ones and turn my setups more efficient and make the comics better while without forcing iray limits, and I think I might have found a pretty good middle ground.

First, behold the physically calculated sun plus the clouds dome: it is more complex than the other ones but the fact it runs on default light settings is amazing. I can build the base sky, set independent and movable domes with stars plus clouds plus a sun that responds to times of the day, like on the second panel it responds to its position with afternoon light.

The burden in render time is about +15% and it still needs to be tested on bigger scenes to be sure it won't blow the VRAM, but it might fix issues with the indoors/outdoors lights that were not looking very natural in the last comics - it will also force me to use 2 cameras with different configs, but it is a low price to be paid when I can fully edit the sun interference in a scene without screwing with the clouds or edit massive RAW domes files or place extra lights. The sun node is visible to reflexes while invisible to camera, so, it will be great to have fake sun detached from the source light! I might use this setup in 2025 on newer comics if the tests run smooth.

Panel 3 is the actual dome that was the star in 2024, with the fancy burned clouds it was really hard to be achieved. but when finished it is efficient and render fast. Unfortunately it sucks in a lot of cases because even the purchased ones need me do edit them and create complex lights configs. I'm very grateful for them and I've learned a lot, but they make impossible to make moving clouds and sun, so, a DVX remake would be impossible with it. Anyway, I'll be returning to it if I need AND I might keep using it as a dome while rendering some indoors because it uses literally the configs for an indoor scene.

Panel 4 is what I thought would be the best setup but failed: I made a sun disk and make it shine over them and it sucked because it looks bad when rendered and the burden in render time is about +90%... anyway, it is not a lost work because it was this setup that incited me to go back for the default physically calculated sun in DAZ, also it will be used in other cases like when mornings need to be set, like in the last CT flashback.

IMO, skies are good to be looked at but I don't bother with a less detailed one that can be fully controlled to make the scenes look prettier, so, I'll go with the first one, I even think the shadows look better there.

What about you guys?