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I'm trying to understand how the new Nishita sky texture is supposed to work. I added it to my world shading like this:

enter image description here

The result in Cycles (GPU rendering), with every setting to default is this:

enter image description here

Everything is blown out, you can't see the sun and barely see the color of the sky. I'm assuming the default settings of the node equate to a "normal day", clear sky, no pollution, you know, just a normal atmosphere. But I mean, that's not how the sky looks on a normal day. To get something more reasonable, I have to crank up the altitude to 11. Literally.

enter image description here

This is the result at altitude 11, which going by the documentation, means that I'm 11 km over the sea level. I'm basically in space. Is that how it's supposed to look? Did I miss something? I updated to 2.90 from the installer version (I was on 2.83 before), and I used the option to import the settings from 2.83. So I'm wondering if doing that might have messed up something. I couldn't find a good tutorial on how to actually use the node.

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    $\begingroup$ are you using Eevee or Cycles? Nishita doesn't work with Eevee $\endgroup$
    – moonboots
    Sep 10, 2020 at 15:25
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    $\begingroup$ Maybe the sky texture is taking into consideration climate change and an apocalyptic future... but it seems that the default options are way too bright. In the Background node bring down the intensity. I find 0.08 to be a more realistic level. $\endgroup$
    – susu
    Sep 10, 2020 at 15:46
  • $\begingroup$ I'm not aware enough about the possibilities of this node to answer this, but IMO, the main effect is to use it to enlight a scene. $\endgroup$
    – lemon
    Sep 10, 2020 at 17:35
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    $\begingroup$ scratchapixel.com/lessons/procedural-generation-virtual-worlds/… $\endgroup$
    – susu
    Sep 10, 2020 at 18:28
  • $\begingroup$ @susu, this link should be the base for a (very good) answer. $\endgroup$
    – lemon
    Sep 10, 2020 at 18:34

2 Answers 2

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You need to adjust sun's elevation in Sky Texture, and Strength of the Background node must be changed to a value of about 0.06. Here a view for sunrise elevation (4°):

enter image description here

When elevation is increased, e.g. to 45°, luminosity increases to a level corresponding to normal daylight. For a full explanation, there is already an answer for:

World: Nishita (2.9) is too blown out and values don't work

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  • $\begingroup$ Thanks, finally a detailed answer. I really don't like that you need to scale the strength value in the background node so much. Imo, the default should represent a natural result right away, that's why it's the default. $\endgroup$
    – Paul
    Apr 6, 2022 at 17:52
  • $\begingroup$ @Paul, I agree it's not normal. Value 1 may be a good value for other sources of light which could replace the sky texture. So the next questions are why is there a difference between the Sky Texture output and another light node output? and which one is correct in term of physics? Maybe the regular light nodes have been historically wrong about their output luminance and the Sky Texture algorithm provides the correct candela value, just a guess. $\endgroup$
    – mins
    Apr 7, 2022 at 8:09
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Just try makings your background strength to a 0.1 I think it’s to high by default.

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