Light dome doesn't generate direct light with caustics on

[carlos_couto]

Hi all,

I'm rendering a scene with a vray lightdome with HDRI as usual, everything works fine until i add an extra vraysun to generate caustics on a pool. This extra vray sun doesn't affect specular or diffuse, it only generate caustics. Everything works fine in the interactive rendering! However the lightdome doesn't generate direct light in the final render!!!
I already tried to turn off caustics in the vraydome but anything changed...
Any thoughts?

[hermit.crab]

Works fine on my end. Could you attach the simplified scene so we can take a look? Also, mention your V-Ray and host platform versions.

[carlos_couto]

Hi, thank you for your time.
I'm using vray5 2.3 on 3dsmax2022.
Please check a very simplified version:https://we.tl/t-95v53w8Iy5

[^Lele^]

What exactly should we be looking for?
The dome is off in the file you sent, and the sun has no contribution active.
Is there any specific action we should be taking to reproduce the issue?

EDIT: in one of the three domes, the active one, if i swap the texture for an HDR of mine, it works just fine.

[carlos_couto]

It should look like the interactive render. What's the reason to have a different behavior on the render?
The hdri used by me is from the chosmos collection, are you saying that if i swap this hdr from another one it will work fine?!

[^Lele^]

I doubt it's down to the HDRI.
If you switch the renderer to progressive, then it looks like in IPR.
Progressive caustics, in fact, need the progressive sampler to work.

[carlos_couto]

Indeed, it works fine in progressive mode! Thanks