hello all
is there a way to place a light e.g. vraysun on the brightest spot of a hdri?
how do you guys make that?
I know there was a plugin from a guy from vienna, which made something similar.
thanks for helping
best regards
themaxxer
wasn’t there some other script or discussion of a possible script to do this? I’m sure I remember talk of automatically finding the brightest part of a hdr…
“sIBL GUI” with “sIBL edit” work quite well and create all the other maps for IBL and is able to bring those maps right into 3ds Max … Vray and Mentalray … thats superb
… but if there is another script that just can find the position of the “sun” that would also be interesting
… better to have two solutions but none
i usually do it manually by putting a camera with target in scene. rotating the camera using the target while looking in the view and line the target up with the brightest part that i can see in my viewport. Then i just align the sun to the target and the sun target to the camera
I use “place highlight” command for that
zoran
sIBL is the best way to go about this.
Otherwise, if you want sharper shadows in your HDR you can place a painted pixel manually on a HDR with something like Photoshop. However, this practice is not recommended for a number of reasons - mainly because of the lack of controls. This is part of the reason why sIBL was developed in order to give a user more control.
I’ve heard of some VFX studios completely removing any direct light source (such as a sun) within the actual HDRs then manually replacing them within a 3d app.
I posted a similar question about a month ago in the off-topic section.
Jujubee-Using sIBL, how do you convert the HDRI UV sun position to XYZ sun location?
you use sIBL gui to export to 3Ds Max !
Thanks tryharder. I can not get the script to work in 2008, 2009, or 2010 flavors of Max running on 64bit. I just get script error and it does not recognize the sibl file. Any ideas?
I do see where you can export the vray sun. Soooo close.
i use Max 2010 Design 64 BIT on XP 64 BIT
works fine here
the script in max startup scripts
you have to close max and reopen and leave it open for sIBL GUI to interact with
Figured out the problem. I was trying to use sIBEL-Edit and sIBL Loader. I was not incorporating sIBL-GUI in the pipeline. All works now. Aligned very nicely.
sIBL is pretty slick isn’t it? I wish there also was an independent way to go about that but so far that’s the best option. It really needs to be updated for Vray/Max - all volunteer scripters on that project…
Maybe I’m wrong in usage but i found that using simple vrayhdri with a sun in it and tweaking (lowering it to something like 0.7 but depends on maps) the gamma value of the vrayhdri map u can get light from sun in map wihout use a direct light or vraysun addictional light.
Of course use vrayhdrmap with domelight
Let me know how u find this usage
Please don’t tell it to noone 
Well, I personally think sIBL is the most efficient method of using a HDR hands-down with an independent light source. If you want to see some examples, head over to my website www.hdrsource.com where I just released close to 120 sIBL HDRs and several libraries. - tell me if they look bad.
And of course, you can always just head over to the sIBL website for more information:
@Maxxer - I think the guy from “Virtual Vienna” is Dschaga on this forum - also one of the founders and coders of sIBL. 
How would one rotate the image imported using sIBL, so that the background and sun all move toguether?If you’re using the newer sIBL GUI, you would normally adjust everything simply by adjusting the North Parameter in the sIBL GUI. With the latest version, the template slightly broke (there was some renaming internally,) so you’ll want just select the model group, and just rotate that. I know… it’s not the best solution at the moment. But we’ve gotta wait until a Maxscript coder volunteers or Dschaga finds the time to hop back on it (the Vray template.)
Also is there any way to adjust the scale, like the palm behind the house for example? That was kind of the question I was asking in the General thread here about Camera Focal Length, etc. I’m not sure it’s 100% possible within Max - at least without plugin.
I was messing around earlier with the offset and the tiling parameters in the environment map copied to a material editor slot. Perhaps that is a temporary fix.
Another solution is to just comp the background out, and put in a flattened image plane that’s scaled separately - maybe in post. It’s a bit of a hack but the lighting should match up more or less unless you’re Superman.
Last but not least, you could manually pop the environment HDR to a sphere surrounding the world, self-illuminate it (I think with Vraylight material - might have to toy with the multiplier) invert so the image is on the back, and scale it up or down that way.
I also wrote Neil Blevins to see if he knew of any solutions regarding cameras and image planes. Hopefully I’ll hear back about this.
Other than that, how do you like it so far?
@rmejia - it looks like your background is comped in both of your images. The reflection and overall lighting isn’t changing with the different background whereas it should. If using sIBL with LWF, the lighting/GI should change a lot.
I wrote some tutorials on my HDRSource website regarding its setup and usage.
http://www.hdrsource.com/vray-hdri-tutorial/sibl-installation/
http://www.hdrsource.com/vray-hdri-tutorial/using-sibl-and-vray-tutorial/
Thanks for the help jujubee. I actually used your tutorials when installing sIBL, thanks for those.
The image with the palm behind it is the one with the default import settings. The reflection and overall lighting is correct in that one. In the second one I just rotated the background image, so just the location changed and it is still using the original environment settings so it looks off. I tried several different maps and the lighting and reflections changed completely. Before rotating I changed the North parameter, but did not notice any difference. I am using sIBL 2.1.1 and the VRay template 0.9.7
I think I’ll wait for the north parameter to be fixed to try rotating again in the future.
I think it’s awesome, I am impressed 
. Hope to be using it often in the future. Wish I had a good dSLR camera to try and make some maps.
I don’t know how long that wait will actually be before it is updated - everyone is working a lot and not much free-time. It’s probably something somewhat simple but I’m not much of a coder.
Also, make certain with some sIBLs that insert lights, that you have your light within sIBL GUI set to 1000 - maybe even higher otherwise it’ll be too close to the world center.
Something’s off about those images - and I can’t quite put my hands on why. LWF would make a big difference.