Advanced Lighting

V-Ray V-Ray for 3ds Max V-Ray for 3ds Max :: General
1

I’m evaluating my options for lighting. I do exteriors almost exclusively. Typically I light with a direct (sun) and GI, with occasional fill lighting. I then add an appropriate sky in Photoshop.

To take my images up a notch, I see a few options.

1 - Same idea I’m using now. Continue to add skies to my texture library.

2 - Use IES Daylight System with vrayshadow and exposure. Same skies as in 1

3 - Dosch HDRI skies

4 - Dreamscape

I can add sky backgrounds easily and inexpensively, but all they are is backgrounds. HDRI definitely looks nice and greatly improves the image, but sun position is fixed. I have seen some great Dreamscape examples, but I am unclear whether they offer a similar lighting solution to HDRI. I like the fact that Dreamscape essentially includes a limitless number of skies and customizable sun positions.

For those of you who have used several of these, what would you recommend?

thanks

2

Yes I agree,I think that is the best lighting method, there are some nice open source hdr’s out there but the dosch are nice too.

3

hmmm…we have the dosch sky library at work and never use them…most of them are too damn blue when used for skylight.

4

hmmm. They do look awful blue for skylight, but nice for sky bkgd. Maybe you have to use one for light and one for background and reflection.

I’ve seen probably 50 or so free HDRIs out there. They work great - except that I don’t often have trees around my scene like the HDRIs do. And I certainly don’t have any Roman buildings!

I guess that brings me to a 5th option. A hybrid. Decent free or DIY HDRI for lighting, with a skydome (sky only though!) for reflections. Then use skydome or site photo for background.

I’m curious though - did either of you ever use Dreamscape? Goncalo’s work and some of my playing with the demo have me intrigued.

5

Scott,

I didn’t think you could run dreamscape in viz. Am I wrong about that, anybody try it?

6

Yes you can. Since 1.46.04 as I recall. It looks awesome too! Search for dreamscape and look for a post by Goncalo (in January I think).

I’m hoping he will chime in!

7

Cool. I’m going to try out the demo. I have to simulate the ocean in an animation project I’m working on… maybe this will help.

8

If you like Dreamscape, you could use it for the background and use an HDRI for the GI. Just make sure your HDRI and background have similar lighting levels.

9

You can also make HDRI’s from Dreamscape (using DS’s exposure control). Here’s a quick example:
http://jeffpatton.net/HDRI-test.htm

That way, the ambient light in the scene would match the sky.

Jeff

10

HDR image can be edited with HDR SHOP + Photoshop so as to get the skylight you want, while use the original one as background.

11

Well so far in my intial tests with Viz 2005, the dreamscape sky has worked very well and seems to be animate fully.

The sea surface works halfway, i can’t seem to get any big waves, or foam. Must be a limitation of viz… bummer.

12

You’re probably running into particles. :slight_smile:

13

You can also place and HDRI inside of an Output or ColorCorrect map.

--Jon

14

or subobject animation… :?