Hello,
I am playing around with they gargoyle scene and I have noticed that if I have the v-ray sun pulled down close to the gargoyle I get a strong blue tint and when I pull the v-ray sun way up my scene looks pretty normal. How do we know where to place the v-ray sun? the distance from the model is what I am asking I guess. I didn’t think it mattered until now. Is there a rule of thumb?
Distance from model doesn’t matter. The angle from the model (in all 3 axis) is what is important.
Distance from v-ray sun
That is what I thought, but not in my test scene. I was confused on why my scene was so blue and when I pulled the sun up it fell back into range. My test scene has the sun directly over and perpendicular to my scene. I am using the gargoyle scene.
how close or far did you have the sun to the model?
Sun Distance
I am not sure, but it happened again. I linked my v-ray sun to my max daylight system and rendered. I got a very blue image. I moved the daylight system up and hour and back down and re-rendered, which corrected the issue. Strange…
Hi Glory, only the hight is important, the high, (the high=the angle, that’s the same thing they are interdependant).
but if you have problem with blue tint I recommend you the fabulous Lele’s script EXPOSIMETER !!! which is perferct in your case, it have an auto white balance.
You can also play with the white balance yourself in the cam, make a test
Exposure Meter
I was just looking into that meter. I’ll check it out. I would like to know how many people darken their materials by the .255? Anyway to have a poll? I can make one on my site if needed. I would like to know if it is working for people.[/i]
WE DON"T use v-ray light or camera because of the big loop it takes you in. Its better to use HDRI environment, Max direct light, and Max camera. But you can learn one thing from the whole lwf thing: outdoor lighting is usually a lot stronger than your instincts will tell you. The best thing you can do to understand lighting is to go take a lot of photographs with a real camera. And take pictures at different times of day so you can see the difference the angle of the light makes on our real world environment.
By the way: I really respect all the LWF guys. They know what they are talking about in the theoretical realm. The problem I find is that we are still stuck with output devices that can’t perform for LWF, and therefore its a big circle.
LWF
So in your opinion the v-ray sun/sky/cam isn’t a good combo? How do others feel?
I think its a great combo.
big loop… well to each his own i guess.
The more I use the more I love it…But at first it does have a high learning curve I think…
benny has a point - our monitors dont display the range, nor does print.
but its still better to use LWF imo.
and the vray sun is infinitely far away, its just the angle you set with a dummy.
Well, i’d say HDR imagery is a good find, overall, and while i am stuck without one of these (404 - Dolby), the technology is definitely coming, and i can still use it to greater effect than an 8 bit image, on 8 bit displays.
When you talk about using hdrs, you are doing EXACTLY the same thing you do with sun/sky/physcam, only with a slightly more limited range.
Sparring with one hand, so to speak.
Start using the rest of your body 
:lol:
HDRI
Then back to the HDRI topic. I bought several HDRI’s, but I haven’t had much luck. Should I use the HDRI in a V-ray skydome or in the environment override. Is the process the same as the video tutorial that I purchased with my v-ray? I forget the name, but I am sure you guys know which one.
The dome light will give you infinitely better results, either stored with the IRMap or in direct mode.
Search the forums for some hefty amount of material and samples about it.
dome light
should I do this with a v-ray sun/cam or just v-ray cam? maybe with a max camera and direct light?
If you use a hdri as a light source and a vray sky / sun you’re kind of making contradictory lighting - the hdri image itself probably has a dominant light direction or source in it so you might get an effect where you have two different “suns” - might be best off having a vray sky / sun as your lighting setup and then using a hdri in the reflection / refraction override so you get lots of range in the reflections from your environment.
As lele mentioned if you’re only using a hdri to provide your lighting and reflections then the dome light will do a far more efficient job of sampling the hdri - you’ll get cleaner results than if you use it in the environment slot or the vray gi slot in the render dialog.
HDRI
So my only source of light would be the hdri dome light?
You should probably avoid taking pictures of anything as well then since this is what LWF is trying to achieve! IMO, LWF has very little to do with how the final image is viewed, but everyhting to do with how the final image is computed. Yes, a lot of the people here keep the image in linear space throughout the entire process from max to nuke, etc but in the end they still end up outputing a final image that is not strictly linear whether it be film, TV or print. The key to understanding LWF is it changes how light gets distributed throughout a scene and whether I view it in linear space or with a burned in gamma of 2.2 doesn’t change how that light got bounced around. If you want to avoid using the vray cameras just set the vray sun multiplier to around .01 and shoot away with a standard max camera (the results are nearly identical).