Why can’t you upload images on this forum anymore?
Anyway, I was expecting this option to generate a stage with blue skies and nice shadows. Why isn’t it?
@EDRobert as another OV user, my experiences with the “Sunlight” template is that it consists of an empty USD stage with one direct light in it acting as a sun light source and nothing else. that’s the reason why the viewport shows up black, so you’ll have to add your own environments after. so, in a way, it functions as advertised…of having only one direct light. that said, there are 11 other templates in the list:
these templates include but not limited to prims such as a emissive “skybox” mapped with 16k pano on spherical mesh, actual dome light, camera, additional light source(s), etc. here’s one example (Grassfield template)
if none of these is suitable for your particular needs, you could consider deploying premade Domelights from the Environments Browser:
the ones with “play” icon in their thumbnails will allow you to animate lighting to simulate different times of day and then some; these are built with emissive “skybox” with both dome light and direct light:
others are texture mapped dome lights, and can be treated as image based lighting (IBL) with no access to direct light:
Yes I can understand how you would assume that the sunlight option would also provide a nice sky. But it really is a basic “direct sunlight” option. For high quality skies use the environment browser.
The thing is, those environments you drag into the scene also contains their own sun, I think?
So what’s the UX thinking here?
Both are valid approaches. We have a sunlight option, just for sunlight, and a full hdri sky and sun system for more complex systems. These are just presets. If you want to create from scratch you can just make a dome light, for the sky and add your own hdri texture. Then you can add a directional light for the sun and set it up the way you like it.
