This is an infill historic renovation in the middle of a historic commercial district. The project has two units, A and B. This is Unit B. I am starting on Unit A now. It’s looking out on a narrow alley full of old sheds, back of buildings, parked vehicles, etc, with mountainside beyond.
I had trouble with the vrayReflection render element. It seemed to save inverted. it’s mostly white but areas like much of the sofa, the recess lights and highlight sides of the windows are black. The vray specular render element saved out properly. I am not doing anything different than usual, not sure why the vrayReflection element is like that and basically not usable.
Any and all comments and suggestions for improvement much appreciated.
I have been complaining about reflection in V-Ray NEXT since day one. The scene is nice, but it is kind of dark. Have you tried Camera Raw Auto?
Thanks for your comments Bobby.
Agreed it’s kind of dark. It is being lit by only a vray sun/sky. (I don’t seem to need vray plane lights set to skylight portal at each window any more. Is that a thing of the past or do you still place those in your interior renders?)
I was struggling to keep the highlights from burning out and so consequently…kind of dark. I’m trying it with HDRI/vray domelight now and it seems to be helping that issue. I will post an update later today.
Yeah, the window lights are a thing of the past. I use HDRi’s for my interiors, which when done right make an interior. It adds render time, but well worth it. I place trees outside my windows to block some light intensity when things get too bright. If things are not bright enough I put a gray reflector as a ground plate and I hide it from the camera.
I have an hdri lit version done and will post it here soon. I kind of went down a rabbit hole with it. It was causing some of the window reflections to get way blown out. any window that was not picking up the reflection of the back plate I have in the scene was rendering as white rectangle, not good. The window that is to the right of the large double slider door was the main problem. I ended up turning off affect reflections in the dome light. then I put a second copy of the hdri in the max environment slot and in the vray gi environment and vray reflection/refractions environment slots and adjusted the multiplier. That worked ok I guess. Is that what you do, separate the hdri that lights the scene from the environment?
No, I just use an HDRI in a VRay Dome. I expose the camera properly and things usually work. I start off with a VRay Sky/Sun, expose that properly and then replace it with an HDRI and then I adjust the HDRI to work. I like to have a known base point first. Some HDRI multipliers are 1, 2, 4… some are 30, 40, 50… and some are 100. Make sense? 
Bobby, thank you for helping me with this. My image started with vray sun/sky and physical camera set to a good exposure same as you. When I went to change to hdri I think I was, in part, adjusting the camera exposure to compensate for the hdri. that was likely a big part of the probelm. I got so spun around using max environment, changing vray gi and reflect/refract environment to hdri and etc that now I can’t be certain of what all I did…normal.
I have updated sun/sky and my hdri versions ready to upload to this post. will do so momentarily. Thanks again for your valuable input.
Much better. One thing I do is look at my image as a thumbnail. Looking at it this way really helps me to see if the image is too dark. I also expose, ignoring my windows and re-exposing the windows in post. Not much different than an architectural photographer will do. They’ll take at least two photos, one exposing the inside and one exposing the outside and merging them in post-production. On my HDRI’s, I do have the V-Ray sun aligned to the hottest spot of the HDRI, however, I usually turn the sun off for interiors. For exteriors, I leave it on.
For the interiors you do with hdri, what if anything do you have in the max environment slot? Also in the vray render setup environment dialog do you keep use GI and Reflect/Refract checked? Do you have any maps in those slots?
Thank you for your help!
Nope, nothing in those slots.MAX environment isn’t used, either. I just rendered this one out will all V-Ray NEXT defaults, using a V-Ray Dome using an HDRI. (sorry, can’t uploads. I am getting errors).
Bobby, this is very helpful to me.
I understand max environment turned off/unchecked.
In vray environment, nothing in any of the map slots.
Also in vray environment, do you have vray GI environment checked/on? Do you have vray Reflection/refraction environment checked on?
thanks again!
Just the defaults. If you reset V-Ray and set to bucket, that’s what I do. I test with Progressive (change 1 minute to 0}, but finals are in bucket mode.
Thank you. Yes that is the same workflow I have used for quite some time.
I am asking about the setup when using a dome light with an hdri. How do you configure vary GI environment and vray Reflection/Refraction environment?
I “think maybe” when using vray dome light that it overrides and vray GI environment and Vray Reflection/ Refraction environment and both of those are disregarded by vray, but I have never been sure of that and don’t know where I got that idea.
Anyway I’m keen to know how you have those two settings configured when you use vray dome Light with hdri.
Thanks again for your help!
still very dark. and does not look natural. to get the VRaySky into interior you need something more than VRay GI enviro. portals or VRaySky in the dome light. leave all environment maps and reflection planes out of it for now. get it right with VRaySun/Sky combo first. VRaySun on 1.0 and expose in the VRays camera.
Piotrus, thank you for your very helpful comments and advice. I did try to first get it right with just the vray sun/sky and a mid gray overide material as you describe. I increased the exposure up to where I started getting burn out in the hot spots.
I somehow had the understanding the skylight portals were no longer needed (wish this issue was more clear), so I did not place them in the windows. I’m going to do that and see if that helps. I have not tried putting the vray sky into a dome light. That’s an interesting approach and I hop eto find time to experiment with that as well.
I think you are correct that because I am only using Vray GI enviro it’s not effectively gettign the sky light into the interior. I will post an updated image here soon. Thanks again!!
I just did a test. I added vray plane lights set to sky light portal at each window. There is some difference from rendering without the portals.
With portals - more noise but 3x faster rendering time and a wee bit more light coming in, esp from the windows on side of the room from opposite from where the sun is shining in.
I will post update image soon.
much better. do not stop with exposure when the burnouts start popping up. go well beyond that and correct with highlight burn slider.
also don’t bother with gray material - it will skew the light distribution most of the time, especially in interiors. if you need something like that try “lighting” override in VRay IPR viewport mode.
maybe try doing this space with two images? one towards kitchen and one sofas/fireplace. you are loosing focus here.
also - put this object into your scene (above the coffee table). it will help you get the shaders right: Unique Download Link | WeTransfer
Much better, night and day.
