What’s Missing?
Skyscape Library of prepared texture images. City skylines, country terrain, and so forth could have provided a rich library and vastly extended the usefulness of Horizon.
Gradient Presets. A library of common presets for the color gradient would also have been helpful and valuable. I would imagine preset gradients with names like “Summer Sunset”, “Sunrise”, “Blue Dusk”, “Gray Before the Rain” … you get the idea.
There are a ton of features that are common in sky generators for 3D packages that are absent in Horizon.
Starscape Generation. The less featured star systems are merely particle generators with controls like maximum star size, color variance, and star density. The most feature-rich systems allow you to specify longitude and latitude of the camera, year-date-time, and will generate a historically and astronomically accurate image of the night sky at that time and location.
Weather Generation. Color gradient is a good start, but many systems enable basic seasonal weather presets, and will generate appropriate cloud cover. More feature-rich systems have subtle weather controls or even multiple layers of cloud generation and solar positioning to properly and dramatically illuminate the daytime skyscape.
Glow controls. The sky is an incredibly powerful source of directionless light. What would have been useful is if Horizon provided a glow control to increase saturation, brightness, and contrast in areas to give the impression that light was originating in the sky. And it would have been impressive if that control had been connected to lighting in After Effects to coordinate sky illumination with the illumination of other layers.
Value
I can see the value of Horizon for motion graphics. I would only recommend Horizon to filmmakers that know exactly what it does and how they intend to use it.
Final Comments
Horizon has a very specific use. And for that purpose, it is nearly an ideal tool. However, it is easy to go beyond the limitations for which it was designed.
