Achieving Specular Highlights Indoors with natural lighting

V-Ray V-Ray Common Tutorials, Tips & Tricks
1

Have always been frustrated by not having Specular Highlights Indoors using the Vray SUN/SKY/PHYSCAM setup to get a very natural lighting.

Specular Highlights only work when the first reflective bounce is hitting a direct light. Often most of a scene indoors is not in direct light so you don’t get any specular highlight render element layer for doing quick & easy [& more realistic] highlight glows in post-production.

See below for an image of the scene setup to achieve specular highlights indoors.

Simply put a vray light in the window and check ‘SKYLIGHT PORTAL’
The GI - lighting from this light will be exactly as the Vray Sky behind it [Something I think that would be impossible to just GUESS??? which now seems obvious why this option was implimented]
You should now have nice speculars indoors!!
Cheers

2

Cool, thanks for the trick!

3

whats the difference in render times between the two?

4

I haven’t had a chance to compare render times yet, [I was only testing the quality so far] although with the small test scene I used didn’t seem to add any extra render time.

I will test again soon when time permits

cheers