HDRI Background+Lighting+Reflection with VRay GPU NEXT, what is an optimal process?

[D3Pixel]

Hi

I am about to setup an ocean scene with a spherical HDRI Sky as a light source and use it as a background. This scene will have a lot of heavy mesh geometry in it too including a full land scene with trees, grass etc.

I have not used VRay since 1.5 so I am wondering at the optimal process to use HDRI Lighting, Background and Reflection as there seem to be multiple places where one could do this.

My thoughts are this:

1. For Lighting: Use Dome light with VRayHDRI map of sky, set to invisible, 2K HDRI resolution
2. For Background: Use Bitmap of sky as (hotkey "8" environment map, 8k or 16K
3. For Reflection: Use Bitmap of sky, instance of #2 (or copy) as Vray Render Settings -> Environment -> Reflection/Refraction map for very clear (or blurry) reflections

As for exposure, disable it on the physical camera, do not use Max exposure control panel and just use the VRay Frame buffer window exposure control.

Is this the correct process in latest VRay GPU Next for HDRI environments and exposure control?

Rendering on 1070Ti's and 1080Ti's

Many thanks.

[D3Pixel]

Anybody? (10 characters)

[MANUEL_MOUSIOL]

Why would you use two different resolutions for the lighting? It just eats more memory. Id just use the larger hdri for everything if memory is sufficient.

[D3Pixel]

I am not using two resolutions for lighting.

What I am trying to do is decouple HDRI lighting from the reflections and background so I have full shadow quality control and better memory management.

This is what Blender Guru does in his Pro Lighting Skies addon for Blender. https://blendermarket.com/products/pro-lighting-skies He saves nearly 87% memory by decoupling the HDRI from reflection and background, basically using this technique.

Also see this link: https://vrayschool.com/vray-3dsmax-split-hdri-lighting/

I am trying to find the best way to do the same in VRay GPU NEXT and Max 2019 where you have multiple places this can be done.
I guess I need to just sit down and do lots of quality vs memory vs render speed comparisons and find the optimum setup with the most control.

[NorthVisualStudio]

I would be interested in knowing the best setup for this aswell.

For the main lighting I have a Vray Sky in the Dome Light texture slot but would like to have another spherical sky map for reflections especially in the glass. I've tried many different approaches but none work.

[^Lele^]

What's wrong with overrides for lighting control?
Besides the linked render settings, there are envornment textures for individual materials, and an override material to be able to have each aspect of the scene deal with a diffrent shader for the same object (i.e. simplified for GI, f.e.).
We support .TX tiled textures too, so memory is unlikely to be an issue because of the high resolution hdri backdrop (the resolution-decoupling technique is two decades old. hardware and methods have since well moved on.).

If there's something specific which isn't working, or for which you're needing help, then please share a scene.