Multiple IBL Textures simultaneously

[pechart]

Hey!

From time to time we light our scenes with multiple IBL textures (like a surrounding ramp, some sharp lights, some soft boxes, ...). Would it be possible to load and render those simultaneously? And additionally implement a way to switch between those textures for viewport preview and enable/disable them for rendering? I'm thinking of something like a layered texture. Hmm, now that i say it, would a layered texture piped into the vray environment or lightdome tex just work?

That way we could render all of the IBLs in one layer and setup the next layer only for IBL1, the next only for IBL2 and so on.

Does this make sense?

[vlado]

You can either use a layered texture in the V-Ray dome light, or multiple dome lights (although there might be problems in the latter case if you use GI).

Best regards,
Vlado

[pechart]

Will this work for the env overrides, too?

[vlado]

Yes, it should work. However keep in mind that environments are not importance-sampled, so HDRI images that have small bright areas might produce more noise.

Best regards,
Vlado

[pechart]

So i'm back on this. Although everything renders fine, it would be a real timesaver to actually see all of the attached IBL textures in the viewport. Maybe it's just our workflow demanding this, but often we use real photographed HDR spheres from our photographers studio environments to light our scenes. That way the photographer gets exactly what he wants. So, would it be possible to make layered textures render correctly in the viewport?
Also i think the envPlacement node isn't the best tool for that purpose. Would it be possible to have direct access to the rotation of the envSphere with a real transform, that you can rotate in 3 axis, not only horizontal/vertical?

To explain this whishes a bit more: As said, we use envspheres from the photographers. These are often very sharp and well defined lights, streaks and other elements. We like to layer that stuff together to create the complete lightrig, exactly matching the photographers wishes.