Mayan Pyramid- Orange or White?

[allieros]

Hey gang, I just finished the Section 2 Challenge. I did try to put the Sun Light in the front, but it didn’t look quite as right without the moon in the back. Is the orange light or the white light preferable? I like the orange myself, but I know it doesn’t have as realistic a look as the white one. Thanks guys!

[Optics9348]

First of all. Love the pyramid! And I will also say I am no expert. But! Lighting is a weird subject haha. Very difficult takes a lot of time to figure out. I’d say definitely go with the white light it’s more realistic. If you want that warmer glow though try putting some more lights in the scene. Always try to stay within like 5% or 10% of absolute white on the color wheel when it comes to light colors. Or at least that’s my experience. Most of the lighting in the real world is not that harsh. Definitely try throwing some lights around in the scene though. Some times I’ll literally accidently place a light some where or turn the brightness way up and it actually looks really cool. Deffinetly look into the lighting settings in Blender. The lighting in a scene can take a model to the next level. Keep up the great work!

[FedPete]

At this stage people what to add more to the scene, colours, light.
No problem of course, but things will be explained later on.

In Cycles you can change the sun angle to make softer shadows.
You can also twee the global world lighting, to improve the overall lighting.
And with Blender there is no problem to add a second, third sun to lighten some darken areas.

Have fun, good work.

[bOBaN]

I like orange better

Though it would be good to add some lights in front as right now the stairs are totally invisible in the shadow.

PS. Orange is close to ‘golden hour’ sunlight color - it’s the time of the day (morning/evening) when many photographers are trying to catch good scene. You can be exact with it and use blackbody and Kelvin temperature for the light (around 2.2k Kelvin). Just don’t try to overuse it (as I did ^^) and experiment with different lighting too as you did in this post.