Render an outdoor scene

Capture

Shoot as many sharp photos as possible from many angles and heights, with strong overlap. Lock white balance and exposure — outdoor light changes quickly, and a set where exposure drifts between frames reconstructs poorly. Avoid moving subjects such as people, cars, water or leaves in the wind. For a building, circle it in passes at different heights.

Use the Outdoor preset

Switch to the “Outdoor (tuned)” Scene-Class preset (in the Quality picker, or Expert Mode → Presets → Scene-Class). It uses a larger Gaussian budget for the wide depth range and enables a sky dome by default — on test scenes it gains over a decibel of quality versus the standard preset.

Handle the sky

Open Settings → General → Experimental → Outdoor Floater Reduction. Turn on “Reconstruct Sky Dome” (projects real sky colour onto a sphere around the scene instead of dark confetti) and “Sky Masking” (tells training to ignore sky pixels so it does not grow floaters there). For vegetation, also turn on “Reduce Elongated Gaussians”, which tames the needle-shaped splats you get over grass and foliage. These options only help when there is real sky in frame.

Step by step

1. 1
   Capture — Take many sharp, overlapping photos from several angles and heights. Lock white balance and exposure, and keep moving subjects out of frame.
2. 2
   Import and pick the Outdoor preset — Import your photos, then select the “Outdoor (tuned)” Scene-Class preset.
3. 3
   Enable the sky options — In Settings → Experimental, turn on Reconstruct Sky Dome and Sky Masking (plus Reduce Elongated Gaussians for vegetation).
4. 4
   Train — Expect roughly 30–50 minutes on the Outdoor preset.
5. 5
   Check the sky — Rotate around the scene — the sky should read as colour, not dark blobs, and floaters should be minimal.