Exterior Moonlight scene on Maya 2018

Eras

Hello everyone,

I'm trying to light my scene on Maya 2018 using Arnold renderer for my final Project at school
and I'm kind of stuck right now because of my lack of Experience in this type of exercice.
I know what type of atmosphere I want to obtain but I don't know how to reach something similar.

Here the reference image from Overwatch Animated Short | “Dragons” :



and here is what I've got so far...



So right now I just have a Aiskydome with a dark blue purplish color and that's all... 
I am trying to add a Directionnal light to imitate the moon rays but it doesn't render at all.

Can you eventually help me analyse the Overwatch image to find what type of Lights they used ?

Thank you in advance.

throttlekitty

For starters, use a better image for your dome, something with some lights in it. Try painting in some bright splotches and see how things feel, or find some HDRIs that you can use. We can see in the OW image that the position of the moon isn't quite the light being cast over the scene, there's a shaft on the back wall (right middle) and the wood frame on the left side and maybe the shadows on the bricks of the left side wall. This is providing a majority of the ambient and some directional light.

The lamps are doing their thing as usual, I couldn't tell you if there's lights inside the geo or if they used emissive textures for that, but either should work for you.

The tree was lit separately with spots or areas to brighten it up- I'd take a guess that the blue light coming from the right is more from secondary lights and not just the dome. Don't be afraid to use a lot of lights working for the same goal. Sometimes it's easier to have a single large area light, other times you might want a series of smallish ones at lower intensity.

Hope this helps!