Adaptive Dome light and Sharp shadows

[robusto92]

Hello,

I am new to V-ray and need a little help. I am rendering 8 images for an image based 360 of an aircraft using the dome light. The aircraft looks great but the shadows on the ground plane are super soft. I can get sharp shadows if I use a vray sun or another type of light, but I really like the aircraft with the dome light. I am wondering if there is a way to get sharp ground shadows only using a dome light?

Thanks

[Paul Oblomov]

Sure. Just edit ur hdr in ps creating lil very very bright spot. OR mix ur hdri with anything, like superbright dot directly in max.

[robusto92]

The HDR I am using is just white on top and black on bottom. I cant make anything brighter. I have attached a screen shot of the dome light settings am I doing something wrong in it

[MANUEL_MOUSIOL]

Can you show that hdri?
Is it a sky?
Probably the dynamic ev range is too low.
Change the hdri to a higher quality one or just combine vray sun with the hdri, aligning the position to the sun's position in the hdri.

[robusto92]

here is the hdr. the original 8500x4200

[MANUEL_MOUSIOL]

Did you paint that yourself in 32 bit?
Seems like a bit pointless hdr if it's just pure white. . Why don't you just modify a plane to look like that?

[ijzerman86]

just use a direct?

[MANUEL_MOUSIOL]

If you like the look of a totally white surrounding (which I don't quite get) don't plug anything into the dome It's white already. Then model the ground so it looks like in your hdri.
Not sure if you get sharp shadows with that though as the uniform lighting will probably cancel itself out. You need one bright spot to achieve that Like vray sun, set to color white

[robusto92]

Thanks all, I am kind of new to working with HDRI's for light. I only used them for reflections and used direct light.