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I'm trying to create a sky and light setup to approximate this image:

Blue Hour

Something like what photographers call the blue hour. Apart from the orange spot lights there is the gradient created by the indirect light from the sun that is sitting below the horizon. I have made this super quick setup to begin approximating it:

enter image description here

Why does the ColorRamp not work as it should? With four colour stops I should see a gradient no? With the orange on the horizon. You can see the sunlamp is pointing directly up, so the light on the sphere is coming from below.

Maybe there is something I'm not understanding about how to employ the Sky Texture. Can it be tied to the sunlamp in some way?

The light from the sky should affect objects in the scene as well as the spot lamps. So how would you recreate the sky and lights for a scene like the image? Sincere thanks for your suggestions.

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I don't know anything about Sky Texture but it looks like this setup works the way you want:

Plug the Sky Texture (Preetham mode) into a Gradient into your ColorRamp (always better to use a Gradient before a ColorRamp if you want your gradient to look like your ColorRamp spectrum, I dont know why though).

You can also use Texture Coordinate > Mapping nodes before your Sky Texture if you want more control on the sky position/orientation.

enter image description here

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  • $\begingroup$ Cheers @moonboots, that is helpful. After your advice and a lot of tweaking, I ended up using just a gradient texture and color ramp on a seamless backdrop style object to simulate the atmosphere I was after. Sort of works. I couldn't get the Sky Texture to work satisfactorily. Is the Sky Texture node outdated? I can't find much documentation of it? Even the Blender manual is a little bare bones on the subject, I guess it's straightforward enough though. But how would you achieve a sort of procedural sundown effect like this? HDRi maps? Cheers for your tireless efforts Moonbots: the Legend. $\endgroup$ – Aubrey May 13 '20 at 9:54
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    $\begingroup$ I guess Sky Texture is useful to quickly set a background gradient. About your sunset, it depends on a lot of thing: Are you planning to animate it? Do you want to make a 360° view? Is your style realistic or cartoonish? etc... You could also simply use a photo or paint on a surface (I personally like this solution) $\endgroup$ – moonboots May 13 '20 at 9:58
  • $\begingroup$ Yea that sounds about right, Sky Texture seems to need a lot of tweaking and additional inputs to approach anything like realism. In my case just the individual render, approaching realism, but not photo realism. Maybe just relying on photos is the way forward, or surfaces as I have been using seamless backdrops to some effect. Thanks again $\endgroup$ – Aubrey May 13 '20 at 10:12
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    $\begingroup$ yes you can paint your sky on a surface, or bent surface, or semi-spherical background, use large and blurry brushes in photoshop $\endgroup$ – moonboots May 13 '20 at 10:18

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