Sky

[Jan Davis]

How do I get a realistic sky?  I was good at the process in Accurender 4, but now the best I can get is a gradient between two colours.  How do i do clouds?

[Roy Hirshkowitz]

Easiest way to view them for you is to bring them into your drawing.  You'll see a preview in the interface.  Follow the instructions on the link above to insert them.  Some more, high quality, free hdrs are located here.

[Jan Davis]

I have a feeling that we are looking at different screens.  You say that I can preview the HDRI files in the interface. I do not seem to have such an interface, and I am unable to find the link that you referred to.

[Roy Hirshkowitz]

The link was included a couple of messages back.  Here it is again.

[Jan Davis]

Arrgh!

Okay, I think that there are possibilities.  Is there a way to scale the HDRI image in the final rendering?

[Roy Hirshkowitz]

No-- the HDRIs are designed to cover the entire visible sphere.

[Jan Davis]

So, for example, when I use the HDRI (London Fire lane), it will show huge London buildings behind mine, and there is no way to do anything about that?

[Roy Hirshkowitz]

No-- you can't really alter these unless you have another product that can edit them (newer versions of photoshop, for example.)  You may be able to rotate the thing around so that you don't see buildings behind yours.  There are many commercially available HDRs which stop at the horizon (sky only).

Pictures, my original recommendation for you, may be somewhat easier to deal with.