How To Get Identical Results with Dome Light and GI Environment

[soulburn3d]

@pailhead

I didn’t say you’d never get sharp shadows with indirect light, but working with high res hdr’s with bright spots can be a hassle without the domelight. Below are two very simple renders, first one with direct light, the other with indirect light only:

To get the sharper shadows with this hdr and indirect lighting I had major issues with splotchiness regardless of how much I upped the samples. It’s probably some to get the full dynamic range from the hdr as indirect light, but I didn’t get satisfying results. And of course, this will vary from hdr to hdr.

I have to admit that the more I think of it the more the terms direct and indirect light are too nebulous. For me as an artist, I read direct light as light coming from the light source and hitting a surface (whether that light source is a tranditional cg light or the sun painted on an hdri), and indirect light means light that comes from a surface and hits another surface (or bounce light). From what I remember back in the old Brazil days, the reason a skylight (or in vray, the GI Environment) is considered indirect light is because the light is “bouncing” off the environment and then striking the objects in your scene. But as an artist, an hdri, while technically an environment, isn’t an object and so should be considered a direct light source and not a bounce light source.

My brain hurts

- Neil