Dealing With Light

It seems to me that with the Windlight upgrade, I'm having trouble with lots of lighting issues.

I have a skybox. I assumed that by putting a roof over my head, and without windows (at least yet), the sunlight from the night and day would be blocked out of my home. Then I would use light sources inside my home to light things up to my satisfaction.

Well, the sunlight just goes right through my roof anyway.

I'd like to just have a roof block out the sun normally, rather than setting and re-setting things like force daytime or nighttime all the time, and asking anyone on my property to adjust that.

Is there any way to block out the sun? Or will it permeate every prim?

Can't be done. Prims in SL don't block sunlight or moonlight, and terrain doesn't either.

Yup. It's lame. Sad but true.

I think they are working on shadows for future releases. This may impact prims blocking light.

An alternative might be to keep your parcel to midnight, and light the way you want it? That would be weird though...

Light in SL is not occluded by surfaces. It goes right through everything. Notice, for example, there are no shadows. If light could be blocked, shadows would exist.

In the windlight team townhall meeting a couple weeks ago, it was mentioned that the code for shadowing and direct light occlusion has already been written, and will be implemented in the near future. I wouldn't hold your breath waiting for it, but it is coming. (Townhall transcript at http://blog.secondlife.com/2008/04/11/1191-office-hours-4-hours-of-fun/)

In the mean time, you have a couple of options. One is you can go into your environment settings, and turn down the intensity of the sun/moon. This will only affect how things look to you, not to everyone else, but if that's all that matters to you, then that might be enough.

Another solution is to texture the inside of your place so it looks like it's lit differently than it actually is. Turn on Full Bright on all surfaces to eliminate the effects of actual light, and then apply good texturing with faux lighting baked into it. The effect can be very convincing if you're a good texture artist. Of course, it that won't change the way avatars are lit, but other than that, the illusion works perfectly.

Take a look at this video for an example: http://www.filmingpathstudios.com/2007/04/15/chapel-of-y-ule/

All surfaces in that video are Full Bright. The apparent lighting and shadows you see are nothing more than clever use of texturing. Nothing is lit by SL's actual lighting system in any way.

Thanks for the answers and workaround advice. I'll have to decide whether to try some of the advice, or wait and hope that shadows are implemented soon.