Miriel's Windlight Settings for Pictures

I shared these settings in FashCon Cafe, and people liked them, so I'm making a post. You need a Windlight client to do this (you need the advanced sky options), but you don't need to have the Windlight shaders enabled.

1. Go to World -> Environment -> Environment Editor. A new window will pop up.

2. Click on the Advanced Sky button. Yet another new window will pop up.

3. Go to the Lighting tab.

4. You see the Sun/Moon Position slider? Move that towards sunrise or sunset. If you move it too far towards night, the light will get a little orange; if you move it too far overhead, however, it will cast unattractive shadows. Feel free to play with it a bit, and find a setting you like.

5. Right above the Sun/Moon Position is a series of sliders called Sun/Moon Color. These control the color and intensity of the sunlight and moonlight. (The R slider controls red, the G slider controls green, the B controls blue, and the I controls the overall intensity.) Grab the I slider and move it all the way to zero. This is just to quickly set the RGB sliders to the same value. Now move the I slider up to around 0.15. Sunlight and moonlight are what actually cause "shadows" in Windlight (I put shadows in quotes because they're not true real time shadows), so turning this down minimizes unpleasant shading. It's kept a bit above zero to prevent things from looking entirely flat.

6. To the left of the Sun/Moon Color sliders are another set of sliders, these labeled Ambient. This controls the color and brightness of the ambient lighting, as you may have guessed. Grab the I slider and drag it down to zero, then raise it to around 0.75 or so. Turning up the ambient light is a way of brightening the scene without added "shadows."

7. Once you have a setting you like, click the New button, name your present, then click Save. Now when you want to use it, you just have to repeat steps 1 and 2, and then select your sky preset from the dropdown menu.

8. It may be a good idea to turn off local lighting. Lights can cast harsh highlights and shadows, and get really bright around sunrise and sunset. To turn off local lighting, go to Preferences -> Graphics. The lighting settings are near the bottom; you may need to click the Custom checkbox in order to access them.

For reference, here is what my Advanced Sky window looks like when I'm using this setting:



And here is what photos taken with it look like:



One last thing: If the sky or light in this setting is too boring for you, you can always try adjusting existing Windlight settings. Use the Sun/Moon Position slider to get the light at an angle you like. Move the Sun/Moon Color I slider down, and the Ambient I slider up. Just be sure to grab the I slider (unless you want to change the light color), so that the RGB sliders all move in proportion.