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I don't know what I am missing here. I have a scene with sunlight coming in a window wall. I have all the physical sunlight settings to 1 like sun power and intensity, basically default.

But then everything is super blown out. Basically pure white. My camera is set to iso 100 and my shutter to 1(1/n) and f stop 4. If I adjust my camera settings so the sun isn't so bright, by raising my shutter, then my lights inside the room will do nothing.. I have to turn them up to like 2000w to even see anything, but then the sun will be right.

I am obviously missing something. The only way I could get the inside lights to show up and the sun to look right with these camera settings was to set the power of the sun to .02, and that doesn't seem right either. I read the docs and 1 should be the correct sun intensity.

I am probably over thinking this and missing something easy, but please help me out.

I want my sun to come in, with hard shadows, then just accent and fill a little bit with my inside lights(hanging lights, can lights). It is a large room, but still something is missing.

Thanks

Cody

Yes the answer is simple, you can't expose both for a bright sunlight render and a interior lit by a few lights. The amount of light is vastly different just as in the real world. Try taking a photo during a bright sunny day, then take the same photo with the same exposure settings in an interior, even with all the lights on. It will be black, or almost black.

So keep your emitters to realistic values, then save out two versions of your render by changing the ISO or shutterspeed, so you get one exposed for the sunlight, one exposed for the interior lighting, then combine them in Photoshop.

Makes sense. This is what my photographers were telling me too. You never know with "computer magic". I am really glad this is the answer though, so they can continue to help with this. And I am not digging for more hours find a simpler way. Thanks mihai, I appreciate the help.

Sorry one more question.

Then how do i get harder shadows? I read sun radius, but I fille like if I turn it down to .1 or 2 it isn't giving me them hard shadows. Is there an easier representation of where the sun is pointing rather than just longitude and latitude?