Cloud Rendering: Sunlight spilling over section box in top-down perspective

[redhouse.j]

Hi, I will preface this with that I'm new to rendering and I'm running LT. I've spent two days tweaking settings to come up with a sub-par work-around, but wondering if anyone else has encountered this and knows a quicker method.

Per the title I'm trying to make a top-down rendering. The section box is just under the ceiling. This works fine for artificial lights, as anything above that cut plane is ignored, however the sun does not follow those rules. Is there a toggle I'm missing that would make the sun obey the cut plane? I've tried the following, the last method getting the closest result but still looks horrible:

1) Raise the cut plane up another 20-30' and hide everything except for the exterior walls. This is ok, but very laborious and I think I need to create some temporary walls that extend more like 60' in the air to completely block the sun...I would also have to hide all interior objects on every floor (of which there are 4), which is painful. Any vertical items would not be cut properly and require extensive post-render fixing in a graphic editor. These views could then only be used partially, as the extended walls in perspective block out all the exterior elements in the view. The fact that all artificial lights also need to be cranked up 30000x in order to be visible in daylight (even when they are in the shadow), vs. a night rendering is also laborious.

2) Turn off the sun and make a "sun" artificial light, placed just below the cut plane. This seems to be the quickest method, but I need to spend time tweaking the colour and placement of this "sun" to get it just so. Having the "sun" only 9' off the ground is also problematic.

Is there a way to put a huge void inside the building that cuts through everything, leaving only the exterior walls? Sorry, I can't share my model as it exceeds the file size.

[barthbradley]

I'm not sure exactly what you are trying to do or where you are struggling.  Sounds like you want sunlight to penetrate a hole of some sort.  Are you unable to do this in LT?

  

[redhouse.j]

I had a feeling it wasn’t clear.. 

in the daylight image, everything along the left and top of the interior walls is lit up with sunlight. I do not want that because it is interior and should not be lit with sunlight. The artificial only image is closer to what I’m after, but unfortunately an artificial sun is required and further tweaking of settings to make it look like sunlight outside.

If this still doesn’t make sense, no problem, I’ll just assume what I’m trying to do is not possible due to Software limitations.

[redhouse.j]

The complete opposite of that.

Say that hole is a cave and you want sunlight to come through the cave entrance, but not through the roof/ceiling of it, because in reality there is a cave ceiling that would block the sunlight. However you are doing a top-down view cut below the ceiling so that you can see what’s inside the cave. Does that analogy make more sense?

[barthbradley]

You mean a camera view like this one that's placed inside the fully enclosed room pointing downwards at the floor showing sunlight streaming through the windows? 

[redhouse.j]

Yes!!!! That is exactly it. Is that done by turning the section box off?

[barthbradley · Accepted solution]

It's done by placing the Camera inside the Room (or whatever the "Cave" is). Might be easier to place the Camera in an Elevated Section View.