Fade to black animation with visible sky (Environment Map)?

doorknob22

Hi!

I want to create a short, non-looping animation sequence which starts in late afternoon and ends in nightfall. So I thought I could have the Environment Intensity and Environment Map start normally on the first frame, and reduced to zero or near zero in the last frame. But it turns out that scenes don't allow transitioning Environment Intensity and Environment Map values between frames, what you set in the last time will be carried out through the whole clip.

Daz does (he he) allow you to transition light values between frames, but if I turn out the Environment Intensity and Environment Map to zero in the first frame and try to rely on light alone, the result is a weird "sun shining in a dark night" effect when I'm aiming for dusk. If I keep them in normal level, I don't have a night in the last frame.

Any ideas how to go about this? Go from late afternoon to night in one animation sequence?

Some solutions which don't work:

1. Anything with emissive surfaces. These are set for the whole scene and can't change between frames.

2. Same for opaqueness. I had this crazy idea of creating a huge "night" sphere and playing with its opaqueness, but the same problem/limitation occurs: opaqueness is set once per scene and can't be changed between frames.

feldarzt

Hey.

Have you tried switching to the Sun-Sky Only setting in the Render Setting and adjusting the time of day? I'm not 100% sure it will work, but I think it's worth trying.

For a guaranteed solution, although tedious in its creation, you could create a series of black planes in front of your camera, then make them gradually more transparent from the first of them to the last. Make their scale 0% in your first frame, then, in the frames where you want it to become darker, make their scale 100% one by one, frame by frame, until the very last and the blackest of them. This would take time to make but it will work.

doorknob22

feldarzt said:

Hey.

Have you tried switching to the Sun-Sky Only setting in the Render Setting and adjusting the time of day? I'm not 100% sure it will work, but I think it's worth trying.

For a guaranteed solution, although tedious in its creation, you could create a series of black planes in front of your camera, then make them gradually more transparent from the first of them to the last. Make their scale 0% in your first frame, then, in the frames where you want it to become darker, make their scale 100% one by one, frame by frame, until the very last and the blackest of them. This would take time to make but it will work.

Unfortunately, none of these work: both Sun-Sky and Opaquness can't be changed within a scene, i.e. they will be set to the last frame they were changed. What does work, however, is an obscure little feature called Sun Dial which is hidden in your Render Presets -> Iray folder, which imports a prop called Sun Dial which allows you to move the sun in an animated scene. 

feldarzt

You're reading it wrong :)
You don't need to change the planes' opaqueness. You need to set it once and change their scale. 0% = plane is literally invisible because it has no size. 100% = it's there again. And it can be changed in an animation sequence.

doorknob22 said:

feldarzt said:

Hey.

Have you tried switching to the Sun-Sky Only setting in the Render Setting and adjusting the time of day? I'm not 100% sure it will work, but I think it's worth trying.

For a guaranteed solution, although tedious in its creation, you could create a series of black planes in front of your camera, then make them gradually more transparent from the first of them to the last. Make their scale 0% in your first frame, then, in the frames where you want it to become darker, make their scale 100% one by one, frame by frame, until the very last and the blackest of them. This would take time to make but it will work.

Unfortunately, none of these work: both Sun-Sky and Opaquness can't be changed within a scene.