Hey everyone,
I am looking for a script for 3ds max where a spot dome light would be created which could read an hdr and illuminate based of that.
I have searched scriptspot only to find too few scripts and the only hdr dome light script there is too old and is not working anymore.
Anyone has any ideas?
Thanks!
Two things come to mind:
The first is that it’s not exactly trivial to parse the pixels values of a (possibly huge) map through scripting, memory-wise, if you wanted to find the “interesting” parts of the map.
On the trigonometric side, it would amount to near-ray tracing, hence being slow.
Besides, you may just end up with lights in the wrong places, if you just used evenly spaced sampling points.
The second is that the vrayDome light does proper importance sampling, quickly and efficiently, and this far is pretty unbeatable.
If you need that script, though, jabber Bobo or ask Laszlo, they’d cook one up in no time 
I recall seeing a script in the past that was supposed to do that. It was awhile ago though.
quite helpful 
this was working but a bit convoluted, didn’t have time to really try it out.
in the end I found using the normal dome light VRay or standard was better.
I would be interested if you find anything usefull, for those rare time I need to use non vray rendering
haven’t tried these yet
I aim to please 
Glad you sorted it out
this might help too
http://www.hdrlabs.com/lightbitch/