SkyDome — Isotropic Overcast Sky

ClassSkyDome
FamilyDiscrete light array (72 Turtle-geometry directional lights)
StandardCIE Overcast (isotropic, type 1)

Introduction

The SkyDome approximates an isotropic overcast sky using 72 directional lights arranged in the Turtle geometry (equal solid-angle sectors). All lights have equal intensity, resulting in a perfectly diffuse illumination from the full hemisphere. This is the simplest sky model and is appropriate for studies where sky radiance anisotropy is not important.

Parameters

ParameterTypeDefaultDescription
powerfloat300 W/m²Total irradiance from the sky hemisphere (W/m²). Typical overcast global irradiance is 100–400 W/m².

Renderer compatibility

Twilight (Sunflow)
GPUFlux
OpenGL / Proteus

Notes

Because SkyDome uses discrete directional lights, it works in any renderer without requiring an environment map bake step. No background sky colour is produced in rendered images. It is computationally very cheap and suitable for large simulation batches.