any good info on vray sun / sky?

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

hey folks,
our studio has recently upgraded to 1.5 and i am now interested in learning a bit more about the benefits of using the vray sun / sky feature. i have read the vray online documentation, which covers the basic parameters, but it doesn’t really provide any convincing reasons to USE these features. i have been using vray lights and hdri maps to generate pretty realistic daylighting scenarios up till now.

my biggest question is what are people using for environment reflection / refraction? i understand that the sun / sky / physical camera system produces realistic lighting results, but what about generating a realistic background environment? and what if you wanted to produce the lighting effect of a partly cloudy day? it seems to me that with a good hdri library you would actually have better control over the environmental parameters.

i was also wondering what type of color mapping would be most appropriate if you are rendering with a physical camera? shouldn’t the camera settings override any other exposure control? and what if you want to do test renders from a perspective viewport, not through a physical camera? is there anyway to prevent the massive over exposure?

what about mixing hdri environment maps with vray sun? is this why there is now a “render” multiplier, since you have to crank it so high to have any effect when using a physical camera?

i’m sure a lot of these questions have already been asked, and i’m just showing up late. if anyone could point me to some informative threads, that would be much appreciated. thanks!

2

Well for what we use here:

as for environment and reflection we can do two things. use 3d models and 3d trees behind the camera wich would reflect. of we use a plane with an image for reflection.

for colormapping we generaly use linear, sometimes we use reinhard if we have some burn problems.

for hdri i have read there are some problems cause you need to crank them up. but i’m not sure about this :slight_smile:

3

thanks - we have also used those techniques on occasion for environment. can work well if you have good models or good imagery.

i’m really wondering about the test renders from non-camera viewports though? a lot of times we need to check materials and model details, but from what i can determine, if you aren’t rendering through the physical camera, you end up with nuclear blowout results. am i missing something?

4

http://www.chaosgroup.com/forums/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=36359

5

thank you - i will definitely watch these!