Central pool.

[Mike1158]

I did mean to respond to this earlier. Sorry Fletch.

Different type of pool, this is more pond/water hole type pool than one for swimming in. More a reservoir and wildlife item.

Something that would also allow for cooling of the inner not quite a courtyard spot, with water.

[Fletch]

ah, cool. gotcha.

I'd lower the power of the moonlight so that the other lights are brighter in relative brightness to that major light. Then I'd play with the exposure.

[Mike1158]

Thanks mate, I'll play later.

[Mike1158]

Wotcha fink folks?

[Fletch]

making progress I think if this is just for fun, it's VERY well done!

I know this is just for fun , so let's talk about renderings for a minute...

To bring out the feeling you are looking for, try saving the image as .exr or .hdr format instead of .png or .jpg and THEN tone map it in an image editor that edits HDR and EXR

If I have learned anything in the past 25 years of making renderings... I've learned a lot, but well, post-processing is nearly unavoidable in this type of lighting situation. It's one of the most difficult lighting situations.

I watched a wonderful video by a professional architectural photographer and he showed how he set up a tripod, then walked around holding a hightlight flash in his hand and took the same photo approximately 20 times flashing that light onto different surfaces. Then in photoshop he overlaid all 20 or so images, and masked in the very best parts of each shot all into one composite image.

But this is definitely improved. Check out this great post about pools at night and imagine being the photographer on those shoots, how much post pro is done to each image to bring out every detail? How many photos were originally taken at different exposures and then overlaid?

Here's my attempt at post-pro brightening the pool lights, and giving more blue cast to the moon light and other surfaces.

[Mike1158]

Thanks Fletch, Lots of encouragement and assistance on this here forum, glad of it too.

I tried to export as EXR from Affinity but no joy so far, any advice on settings to select for the export file?

[Fletch]

you must create the rendering with Twilight and save-rendering-as
nameofimage.exr

If you are opening the .jpg into infinity and exporting as .exr, there's no extra data to be gained this way.

the rendering in Twilight has WAY more lighting info before you save it, once you save it as .jpg and close SketchUp, the image info is lost.
If you have not yet closed SketchUp, you can open up Render History in Twilight Render and find the image and still tone map it, save as .exr.

[Mike1158]

Ta Fletch, I will re render later.

[Mike1158]

Hmmmmmmmmm. Got me in one.

No idea what to do with that pair.

[ntxdave]