Lighting Help

[Red333]

Hello everyone, I'm new to the forum and VfSU. I'm having trouble getting shadows to display in an exterior daylight scene. I have an HDR image in my GI and background slots. What am I doing wrong? Please disregard the time of day in the sample image, as it is not what I'm going for. I want a sunny mid-day environment. Any help is greatly appreciated.

http://img713.imageshack.us/i/modernexterior.jpg/

How do I attach images?

[andybot_cg]

Re: Lighting Help

Hi Red333 welcome to the forum. Unfortunately, HDRI seems to have this problem with VfSU, where it doesn't provide sun illumination. If you want to see shadows, I would use texSky for your sun, and the HDRI only for the background. Correct me anyone else if I'm wrong, but that's what I've run into when trying to use HDRI as a light source.
-Andy

[thomthom]

Re: Lighting Help

Unfortunately, HDRI seems to have this problem with VfSU, where it doesn't provide sun illumination.

I'm a bit confused to what you mean by this statement. To me it'd indicate that HDRI's can't be used to illuminate a scene - which it can when you add it to the GI slot.
There is an issue with HDRI's an shadows - but that's due to the nature of the individual HDRI - as some produce stronger shadows than others. Fernando, and some others here at the forum, has mentioned they use a blend map to combine the V-Ray Sun/Sky and HDRI - where the V-Ray Sun/Sky is used to produce sharper shadows. Though it needs some tweaking to get the Sun/Sky and HDRI environment to align.

[andybot_cg]

Re: Lighting Help

Thomas, thanks for pointing that out, I missed the part about being able to blend sun and HDRI. In my experience, I found HDRI maps are way too diffuse to get a strong shadow, even with a relatively strong source in the map.