Aligning VRay Sun with sun in HDR

V-Ray V-Ray for Maya General
1

Is there an automated way to snap the vray sun to the position of the sun on the light domes HDR?

Currently, one way we use, is to look at the sun reflection in a shiny sphere, to match the two.

2

We don’t have a way of doing that automatically, I’m afraid. Don’t know if it’s something that is easy to do, but I’ll make a note for it.

3

Oh, I use a sweet script in MAX that does it. I am not sure if things can be ported over.

4

Hi Bobby

How does the script work/is the script written in python?

Cheers

5

Depends on what the script does. I would image that it would not be easy, since it would require some visual guide in the manual case, so the automated case would need to guess where the sun is in the image by (probably) looking for the brightest parts of it or something like that.

6

It is encrypted - finfandbind_forvray_v1.0.mse

7

Looks cool. Just need similar for Maya.

Cheers

8

I have a pretty simple rig for daylight system and vray dome. that has a look at controller that only effects the z-rotation on the vray dome light.

its works for me because all my hdr’s have the sun in the same location.

9

Cool.
I guess having the sun in the HDR in the same place each time helps.

10

I wrote one for Maya but haven’t used it for a while. It was written purely for my own workflow but feel free to pick and pull code form it to suit yourself. Things changed in V-Ray and Maya over the years so it may need tweaking.

Just rename it to .mel and run hdriSunConnector. Good luck
hdriSunConnector.txt (10.9 KB)

11

One thing I did with that script.

if you had a HDRI, it was usually too bright to use in the Viewport.

So what I did was if you have two files.

1103_SunClouds.hdr
1103_SunClouds.jpg

The script was designed to use the jpg. It would display nicely in the viewport, you could align the sun and when you press finish the script would autmoatcalliy replace the jpg with the HDRI or EXR file.

12

Great stuff, cheers snivlem. I’ll try your script.

13

Just ran the script, but nothing happens - sorry, I don’t know exactly what I’m doing.
I’m on a mac and 2016.5 currently.

Does the script find the brightest point in the image and align the sun, or is this still a manual thing?