Right now it is not possible to accurately type in the Longitude/Latitude settings or things like time of day etc…by default in Maya or Vray.
However it is possible in mental ray with the use of this script:
http://www.creativecrash.com/maya/downloads/scripts-plugins/lighting/c/geosun
What this means for Vray is that we can now use mental ray’s sun and accurate geographical time and date features as a reference for Vray’s system. Here’s how to do it:
- In mental you can create a Sun + Sky system using the geoSun.mel script
- Once it has been created make sure to turn off the sunDirection light (turn of the “Illuminates by Default” checkbox of the sunDirection). We just want to use it as a reference for Vray’s sun
- Then when you switch to Vray, create a Sun + Sky then you can manually align the Vray sun so it matches up with the sunDirection light, do this in local rotation mode and use all the orthographic viewports
- Once you have it lined up perfectly, select the sunDirection then Vray’s sun and then you can create an Orient constraint (make sure you have keep offset on),
-now whenever you change the attributes of mental ray’s sun Vray’s sun will follow making for a very accurate daylight system in Maya!
You’ll have to source the geoSun script in you userSetup.mel for it to work. So open up userSetup.mel and type in:
source "geoSun1.1.1.mel";
Hope this helps someone, it is very useful for Arch Viz as so many Architects want to see what their shadows look like during certain times of the day. The script is very accurate too, I have many times managed to line up CG models with live footage to get perfect shadows.
