Rendering exterior animation using animated HDR to light the scene

[tricky]

We want to shoot an HDR timelapse video and use this to light the exterior of a building.

Has anyone done this sort of thing? Can an animated HDR be somehow used as a texture in a vray domelight?

[Neilg]

yeah, works great. did it for a timelapse - try and do it without GI though because even with animation prepass mode it'll flicker like mad. the dome light is just too unfocused and the render times go through the roof battling it.

A couple of shots were done with LC/BF where GI was essential (render times were HIGH), and for one I comped the no GI/direct light animated HDR pass with a separate render that had GI on but only a few lights where i needed, no environment light - worked way better than I expected. I only tried that at the end in a panic and probably would have done more shots like that had I known it would work.

[tricky]

Thanks for the description. I must say I am slightly concerned at the potential size of the hdr video file one created. Even still image hdr files can easily be 100mb at least.

[Neilg]

We used a lower range and keyframed the light position to match, trying to get a big enough hdri to cast sharp shadows will be a nightmare.

You can also just get a 16bit timelapse from shooting in raw and mix that with a vray sky using comptex. it'll be much easier and nobody will be able to tell.

[chriserskine]

did you use 360 hdr's for this?