Illumanate the ext when rendering int

[michaelinitaly]

I posted the below and then ran some more test.. this image was done without photon. I have rendered many test on the int and many on the ext and I could always see the outside including the skydome.

I think it may have to do with the fact that before I was using the default light and after some advice from others as the the flatness of my rendings, I no longer have the default on. Is there a way to light up the skydome and surrounding areas? I tried to place a vray omni and only have it effect the skydome.. it did not work and I also have other areas I need to light..

Thanks for any help.
Michael




I am try to learn how to use photon and I have a model that I have used a skydome to create the ext. When I render the interior, the ext that does not fall with the direct light that I have for a sun does not show up in the render, in effect I get a night shot. I tried to add a vray omni and just have it effect the skydome, but that did not work.
I have a large garden and pool that are modeled that must be visible from inside the building. Can I use photon and still have a good rendering of the ext area? I have found that I can render much faster with photon...
thanks
Michael

[natty]

hi
make sure you have your colour mapping so it doesnt affect background and also make sure your glass has Affect shadows ticked ....use Exponential or HSV colour mapping, that will stop your image from blowing out your white materials.

[michaelinitaly]

Thanks Natty,
I have set this scene up modeled after your photon tut so the color mapping is set to hsv and I am using aec doors so the affect shadows is set by default.
thanks for the help
Michael

[michaelinitaly]

I found the answer was to just increase in size the vray omni to include the sky dome so .. 150 x 150 x 150..
this works... is there any downside to having a light this large?
Thanks
Michael

this light only includes the skydome

[J_Bug]

Michael:

If you're increasing your light to 150 and it's encompassing the entire scene than your scene might be too small for using Photons. You should consider using the Rescale tool found in the Utilities tab to scale your scene up quite a bit.

I think you may be approaching it wrong. If I understand, you have a hemisphere with a sky material on it, which you want to act as the background. You also have some exterior models you want illuminated that are inside this sky dome. I imagine that you're also using all VRay materials due to the fact that you want to use photons. Really you only need the VRay materials on the objects you want to interact with the photons.

It's really hard to tell from your image what exactly is going on with the lighting so If you could post a top down screen capture of your scene. To simplify things I would suggest the following...

If you choose to use a sky dome it doesn’t have to interact with the lighting of your interior. Make the sky dome a standard material and use your diffuse map in the self illumination slot as well.

Not sure what you meant by "default light" but you can set up a Direct light for the sun outside and turn on "Overshoot" to illuminate all the geometry outside. Check out the help file for more info on this feature and shadow casting.

There are other techniques you can use to improve on these suggestions but I'm just mentioning these because I remember you saying you're just learning MAX. Hope these help to get you started, you might want to take it easy on these advanced VRAy procedures and learn a little more about the basics first.

--Jon