Sun light gets too far in the building (or light leaks)?

Please cast your votes in our two ongoing feedback polls here and here!

    I'm working on an enormous building which is a combination of office space, storage and assembly lines. It's merely a hobby project and I don't need to do any photographic renders since the style I want to use in the end is more illustration like.

    The thing is that if the sun is shining outside there are all kinds of places lit up while light never would reach those places so far into the building. At night or late in the afternoon I don't have the problem, so I think the sun is the issue here.

    What I tried:

    • manual exposure
    • create extra geometry to close any gaps that may be there
    • creating a really rough material so I was sure it was not caused by reflections
    • sun brightness at 0 (works but well.. no sun. even at 1% it gets like the attachment)

    It's not that I expect a real time render to be as thorough as something like V-Ray but I've the feeling the sun 'pushes' a bit hard to get into the picture. Maybe there are some tricks or a certain way the sun works I can adjust my workflow on.

    This is the one with sun:


    This is the one around 18.00 in the evening:



    For this project it doesn't really matter but I would like to learn something about how the sun works and how it can be controlled a bit. Doesn't have to be perfect but the light above the vertical beams is a bit crazy in this example.

    Hope someone has some nice tips I can use while finishing this 30.000m2 😬 building.

    Quote from Veen

    Use a Skybox and put the sun to 0

    That's not a bad idea at all, didn't think about it. Might look ok as well.

    Quote from Adam.Fairclough

    Can you share the model? It might be easier to make recommendations if we can see how it’s been made

    I've sent you a private message if you want to take a look. It's not by far finished as you will notice. I tried several things like for example making the top of the vertical beams an inversed T-shape so there was an extra obstruction between the main roof and the vertical bars sticking through the metal ceiling plates.

    No need to put a lot of time in it, it's not a major thing for me but maybe you like to play around a bit to see if you've some nice ideas.

    Quote from Ilias Kapouranis

    Hello! This issue seems to stem from our Global Illumination solution which is at odds with the sun (kidding). We have several advancements for version 3.5 which will 99% solve this problem.

    That sounds cool! I've also sent you my SKP in a PM, maybe a nice test case for the upcoming version :) Like I wrote Adam, it's not a major issue for me. Basically this started as a small question of someone who wanted illustrations of the building so they could show where members of the works council (not sure if that's the right word) worked. I just got carried away a bit and love to test and learn things.