I am trying to create an indoor enviroment. I made two windows, added a sun and rotated it so that it could go throug the window and lighten the sofa and part of the wall. But I don't see the sun light anywhere.  I checked on settings and is not invisible to the render but it just not reflecting any light. The only light I get is from the image background.  This is the picture with sun    and this is when I delete the sun   Can anybody tell me please why is this?  Thanks in advance
4960
My model has a clear plastic (or glass) dome with objects inside.  The objects appear dark.  I've tried the glass shader with color 100% RGB, with very small IOR, and using just a refraction shader.    I know Cycles has problems with caustics, but I just want broad illumination to fall clean through the glass.  The light-to-column path can ignore refraction, but is blocked or tremendously attenuated. The camera-column path needs refraction, and seems to work fine anyway.  This demo image offers all optical paths of interest:   light upon object, seen directly light upon object, seen through glass (looks okay) light through glass onto object, seen directly. This is the shadow on the lit side of the column just below the glass tubing.  I expect full illumination, but there is shadow.  There is some light, but it's diffuse light from the floor. light through glass onto object, seen through glass. This     I did at one point try non-progressive rendering, and find extremely coarse light where there shouldn't be shadow, but this is not a practical way to make nice images. I've even tried cranking up certain sampling settings to many thousands, but still get bad noise though less, at the cost of long render times. I  would like to finish my creations sometime before "Star Trek, the Generation After the Next" becomes real life, if you know what I mean.  The next image is an example. I think Transmission in Sampling was 5000, but not sure.    I'm using Cycles in Blender 2.67 on a quad core Linux machine, 16GB RAM. Machine limits have never been a problem for 3D rendering.  Possibly, I screwed up some setting when I made my startup file, and just need to fix it. OTOH maybe this is just a limitation of path tracing, or of the way Cycles does it. If that's the case, what to real-world Blender artists do when they need to produce images on a budget and schedule?  What is the practical real-world fix?
14107
I created a glass cone with black seams (the seams are a diffuse not transparent material).    When I shine light on it, the cone casts a solid shadow. Why is this?   I would like to have a (semi) transparent shadow cast from the glass and a full shadow from the seams.  Here is the link where you can (hopefully) download the blend file:
15268
I have a model which you can see here (camera perspective).    In the second image, you can see how the render turned out.    I'm at my wit's end trying to figure our why it's not showing up in the render. If anyone needs more information, just ask and I'll get it to you. I've already checked the normals and they're not the cause.
25507
I want to make certain shadows more prominent (using Cycles) without further illuminating the rest of the scene.  Example: I have a simple studio with a bowl of fruit and 3-point lighting.  The light looks great so I don't want to change it but I want the bowl to cast a darker shadow on the ground (without dimming the back-light).  Alternatively, and this would be really cool, an anti-light source.  Like a spot light that throws darkness instead of light. (Am I crazy for wanting this?)  Thanks!
84073
In experimenting with an hdr environment texture for the World (with Cycles), I do not see very pronounced shadows in my scene even though the image has an uncloudy sun.  I expect my objects to cast shadows because even though the sky is bright, the sun is much brighter.    For outdoor scenes, is it typical practice to use a Sun lamp in addition to the environment texture or am I missing some other setting?
51284
for some reason, my person will not show up when rendered. I have checked the material and it is fine. Not sure what i did. Hoping that someone can figure it out for me.   here's a link to the .blend file:
7776
I'm trying to render a lightsaber on a transparent background to use as game sprites. I've followed a  on youtube to create the glow/blur effect and it worked great on a black background but it's completely invisible on a transparent background. I figured I had to put an alpha channel node somewhere to make it work but I tried all the "alpha" named nodes all over the place and without success.   This is how the node setup looks like   Here is the  if you want to take a closer look.  EDIT: Found a solution/workaround. Doesn't look as good as before but it's close enough.
115536
How would I go a about making volume light beams?  I have have tried  various tutorials, but they must be for a older version. as applying them does seemingly nothing.  A link to a functioning tutorial would be greatly appreciated as well.  I don't have a picture or .blend to show, as my problem with atmospheric lighting does not pertain to any specific scene.
15465
I was working on a something and I thought, wouldn't sunbeams look great with this. So I searched in google and everywhere but didn't find any answer. So my question is how to make sunbeams in blender?
31781
I've made a roughness 0 glass pane, when I'm in lookdev mode it's reflecting a background that I didn't put there. I know I could just ignore it, but I'd rather be able to see what it'll mostly look like when I'm in the later stages. I also just want to know how on Earth I managed to set this background without realising it  Reflection completely ignores any objects I put in front of it. If I placed this glass inside my house, it would still just reflect trees (This is the point where I felt I couldn't ignore it - reflections are going to play a big part in my project and I don't want to be in render mode all the time)  The nodes are the default glass BSDF, except I set roughness to 0  The glass is set to 20mm thick, if that makes a difference  The background moves with my perspective and moves when I relocate the glass  I have a few HDRI's on my PC, but none look remotely like this   Also, I'm using cycles as I find Evee buggy as hell
100898
I am doing an animation with a camera to add 3D elements to it (don't really know what it is called) when I press shift z to render my scene, things look great.  but when I try to actually render an image from my animation it only shows the monkey with the shadow, but no background.  I know that it has something to do with compositing nodes and stuff, but I am not sure how to works.. could someone please help? A also I used the new shadow catcher thing to make the shadow appear. Thank you.
20686
I did setup an easy scene with an area light behind a window. In the glass (simple plane) which is in front the area light is visible - how can I turn this off so that the background is shining throgh?
20610
I'm kinda new to Blender. Currently playing around with version 2.8 to practice some rendering. Is there a way to achieve this 'light-star' effect for the blooming objects with the emission? If there is an alternative way then it's fine too. See these images below for references. Thanks in advance:
17940
So, I am not sure I can reproduce it via images, but the steps are:  1) At night, open a window and have a look at the surface of the earth  2) Suppose there's an object that reflects a tiny amount of light  3) When you actually try to focus your eyes at this object, you either don't see anything (depends on the amount of light it reflects) or you can hardly see it  4) When you focus your eyes on something that is 3-10 metres away, you can easily see this object with your ambient vision. Not the details, but it seems that it reflects more light.   Why does it happen?
49269
Look at my scene:     Sun is rising and as you can see the scene is realistic; I mean, that what is in shadow is almost completely dark. This is correct, but i would like something less "dark", like an HDR.  These are some parameters i'm using:     This is my unique Light in scene (Sun):     I'm using also a Post-Processing profile with "Eye Adaption" unflagged.  Can you suggest me what i've to change to make my object affected by shadow less.. dark ?   Thanks
116390
So I'm part way through a fun small project, and I would like some advice about how to improve the glass material at the far end of the scene on the two doors.  In the ref photo the reflection is sharp, but you can also see inside the fridge or whatever it is.  I'm aware there's still a lot of things left to do in this scene, improve lighting, finish up materials but I'd like to address this glass shader.  PS - Any other tips appreciated, I'm a fairly novice user! I do 3D in spare time because I just love it.
53532
I have made an object glow using nodes and cycles render. when I hit the render button in the properties panel it glows fine but when I go into the rendered view it won't glow. Is this even possible?  Rendered when render button is clicked:    Rendered in viewport: