Interior lightning

[Hein]

Hello,

I'm working with rhino about 5 years. I working also with Vray, but a plugin in Matrix. Matrix is a plugin for rhino for drawing jewels. Yes, I'm a jewely designer.
But now I will draw my new house in rhino. So far so good.
I will do an interior render.
My house has big windows.

I work with rhino 5 and Vray 1.5

What's the best setup?
I have seen sunset and rectangle light before every window? But i think these was an tutoriol from Vray 1.
Or a domelight with an hrdi?
An normal hrdi for the reflextions and an blury hrdi for the light?
In that case are rectangle lights before every window necessery?

I find so much info, but no answords.

thanks a lot

Hein

[fooprobe]

there is no "best setup". everything depends in a very big way on what the scene is like. how much do you see out the windows, what time of day is the render, etc. first, i wouldn't recommend a dome light if your scene is indoors. the dome light casts more accurate shadows from an HDRI than GI skylight, but it is noticeably slower. since your the exterior ambient light is usually not the primary lighting for an interior scene, i wouldn't use a dome light, as you will get all the bad and none of the good. i guess if you were rendering a greenhouse and wanted perfect shadows cast by the ambient light then you might use the dome light.

so that leaves two basic methods for lighting coming from outside: either an HDRI in the GI skylight (+ sun if desired) - or - a rectangular light at the windows.

if you use the GI skylight, then you get all the colors from the HDRI coming from the right places, but it may not bounce far enough into the geometry, so you may have to seriously increase the multiplier to get the effect you want. if you can see other geometry out the window then this could be a problem. this is why sometimes rectangular lights are used instead. but if you use a rectangular light, then you will only have a single color coming from that light. this is fine if it is a bright time of day, or if it is night and there is not much light coming inside anyway; but towards dawn and sunset this isn't very realistic. you can also combine these, but usually if you are using the rectangular light, it is because the skylight is not coming through the windows enough anyway.

hopefully this gives you a sense of when and why you might use these lights. i'm sure others will have different opinions too

[Hein]

THanks a lot. That make sense.

I think i will try the Gi skylight with rectangle lights.

Thanks