Looking at the sun makes image dark

[coilbook]

Hi
Why when our camera points towards the sun everything looks dark. And when sun is behind the camera it is nice and bright. I guess that's how it is in real life. Is there anyway to have same environment brightness no matter where camera points - toward the sun or away. Thanks

[profbetis]

This isn't a bug or problem, rather the way light works. When you look towards the sun, most surfaces (including bumpmapping) are in shadow. See how the tree's shadows are coming towards you? The sun is illuminating the part of the object facing away from you (and therefore towards the sun). When you look away from the sun, you are seeing the parts of the objects illuminated by the sun as well, similar to how holding a flashlight would look.

[coilbook]

This isn't a bug or problem, rather the way light works. When you look towards the sun, most surfaces (including bumpmapping) are in shadow. See how the tree's shadows are coming towards you? The sun is illuminating the part of the object facing away from you (and therefore towards the sun). When you look away from the sun, you are seeing the parts of the objects illuminated by the sun as well, similar to how holding a flashlight would look.

Thank you! I guess 3d animation movies use something where no matter what angle you get same brightness

[profbetis]

Diffuse bounce light helps fill in shadows, especially from bright surfaces like sand. This requires more computational power but will help your shadows not be so dark. You can also increase the turbidity in your daylight system in order to reduce the contrast of the sun and bring shadows/sunlit sufaces to a more similar brightness level. If it's a static scene and you don't want to use the computational power to compute bounced light, you can instead use large light planes at a low intensity to add lots of fill light into a particular area.

[coilbook]

Diffuse bounce light helps fill in shadows, especially from bright surfaces like sand. This requires more computational power but will help your shadows not be so dark. You can also increase the turbidity in your daylight system in order to reduce the contrast of the sun and bring shadows/sunlit sufaces to a more similar brightness level. If it's a static scene and you don't want to use the computational power to compute bounced light, you can instead use large light planes at a low intensity to add lots of fill light into a particular area.

Thank you!

[noldo]

If the material is diffuse and have diffuse roughness, the surface appear darker when the sun is frontal