Sky Light

Add a dome of light to provide lighting from every angle. Best used with an enviroment image.

Method #

This node simulates a dome/sky light by surrounding the scene with a large number of shadow-casting spotlights positioned on the dome pointing inwards. This allows the skylight to be rendered efficiently, although it may still be too slow for real-time use in many scenes. To increase efficiency the spotlight shadow maps can be cached and only a subset updated per frame. This reduces render time significantly but reduces responsiveness to animation.

Turn on deferred rendering on the root node to enable the skylight.

All nodes connected to this node are treated as if flowing to the parent node, and inherits any transformation changes along the chain.

Parameters

Attributes

These properties control the core behaviours of the node.

Parameter	Details
Omnidirectional	When enabled, light emits from all directions inward. When disabled, light only emits from above.
Brightness	Brightness of the skylight.
SkyDome Radius	Radius of the skylight.
Dome Vertical Weight	Balances the weighting of the sides and the top of the dome - to blend between a true dome effect and a more ambient-occlusion-like look.
Shadow Bias	Increasing the shadow bias can improve the accuracy of grounding objects to their shadows.
Apply Diffuse	Enable / disable diffuse lighting for a Sky Light.
Apply Specular	Enable / disable specular lighting for a Sky Light.
Apply Refracted	Skylight Rays can move through translucent surfaces.
Num Sample Directions	Number of directions sampled for the skylight.
Shadow Map Size	Size of the shadow map for each direction sampled.
Num Sample Direction Renders Per Frame	How many directions are sampled per frame. Lower values increase efficiency, but changes in the scene may not be reflected immediately.
Dynamic	Toggles off dynamic sampling which aids performance.
Raytrace	This will enable raytracing in the skylight. Only works with raytracing enabled in the Root node.
Raytraced Samples	How many samples will be taken per frame for raytracing. Best used with continuous refinement enabled and the RT Refinement Node.
Translucent Raytraced Shadows	Allows translucent shadows to be generated by Glass Materials.
Visible Sky Dome	Generates a visible sky box around the light scene.

Inputs

Name	Description	Typical Input
Objects	Select which objects should be affected by the skylight.	3D Object
Environment Map	Add an environment map to control the colour of the skylight.	Environment Map
Point Cache	Use a point cache to improve the accuracy of the Lighting in your scene. Not used when Ray Tracing is enabled.	Point Cache
Transform Modifiers	Apply the transforms of another node to this node.	Null
Target Node	Modifiy the rotations of the node to always direct the z axis towards the input.	Null
Local Transform Override	Apply the transforms of another node to this node, relative to its parent.	Null