vray sun exclude option?

[skogskalle]

hi guys!

Im working on an exterior at the moment, and have been playing around with the Vray Sun + sky feature. Its really cool and everything, but I do have a question:

Im using lots of bitmapped trees facing the camera. If I was using a normal direct light as sun, I would exclude all the trees from it, and then use an ambient only omnilight to control the light on the trees. But the Vray sun doesnt have an "exclude" option... so my trees get very different lightlevels depending on their angle to the sun.
Is there another way to make the sunlight ignore the trees when using vray sun?

thanks in advance!

[dominiquelaksmana]

what is this vray sun that everybody was talking about? how come i don't have it ? do i have to write a request to chaosgroup to obtain it?

[skogskalle]

vray sun is a feature in the coming beta build. Its a combo of a new lighttype, the "vray sun", and an environment map called Vray sky.
I had some big problems with render-to-texture in the last build, and since Vlado had already fixed it he was nice enough to let me have a newer build.

anyone who has an answer to my original question? I know I could probably render the scene in two passes, one with the trees, and one with the rest... but Ive got zero experience in comping in post... so if possible, i would like to render everything as one pass.

[jacksc02]

why dont you just use geometry trees? It will be better in the long run.
Passes are going to be your only option here unless you switch to a different type of sun light. I have been use ies sun and the vraysky for exteriors and it wors well, and it gives you the ability to exclude objects.

[skogskalle]

I will use geometry trees for the closeup ones (maybe 40 trees)... but I need to render a whole forest in the background and even though proxys work great (use them alot in this project) I dont want to think about the rendertimes if I have like 3-400 trees with 200.000 faces each... (most of the trees are pines and spruces which require lots of polys to look good)

or maybe the rendertime wont be much higher than if Im using 400 bitmapped trees instead??

thanks for the tip! Ill try the ies sun! didnt know it worked with the vray sky, but thats great!

thanks!
Kalle

[jacksc02]

check out my post here
http://www.chaosgroup.com/forum/phpB...=112096#112096

I have used an ies sun and the vraysky with over 16million polys and countless proxy objects.

[skogskalle]

damn! that looks really good!

Ill give it a shot... ill try to build the whole forest with proxys. Ill be away for a few days, but Ill let you know how it went sometime next week... If Im allowed ill post some renders too... gotta ask the client first.

I just bought the broadleaf and conifier sets from onyx today! Really happy with the broadleaves, but Im not thrilled about the conifiers yet.... but thats most likely my fault and not the programs.

thanks again!

[jacksc02]

you will get the hang of it!!

[visions]

I would like to get the hang of this super secret and elusive Vray version with the Sun and Sky too.....
Besides getting down on my knees....is there another way?

Yes...i did e-mail Valdo and chaos.

and...i am still waiting and wanting