Just tried it in max 9 with vray SP1, so nothing new. I always approach lighting interiors this way i.e. using plane lights to, as I assumed, supplement the environment light. I guess what’s really been happening is the environment light is lighting the exterior visible through window openings but the interior is being lit solely by the plane lights plus direct sunlight.
If you’re using an HDRI as your environment light and want the colour to influence your interior you would need to use sky portals.
But using the lights as portals doesn’t allow you to boost the light level which is what I thought tct was after. You’ll get better shadows, etc, but the light intensity should be roughly the same.
Yes, that’s correct. Light levels should be controlled using the camera exposure though when using the physical camera and vray daylight system, not by adding additional lights, if you’re going for a realistic approach.
If you want independant control over exterior and interior lighting then you have to use the plane lights as standard.
tct: Another option if you want to boost the light coming in to the interior is to just put another light set to portal mode just behind the additional vray light. Since the skylight is no longer GI but is computed as an actual light it passes right through the next vray light.
There’s nothing wrong with the other approach, it’s all subjective after all. I generally never use plane lights in portal mode and wouldn’t have noticed this issue were it not for this thread!
All good :). Whatever get’s the job done. From tct’s original post it sounded like he wanted to increase the amount of light in the room, not just get better shadows so that’s what I was aiming for.
I didn’t understand the problem at first. When I built a scene I used the lights with all their default settings (multiplier at 30) and I didn’t get this problem. Attached is a samples of your scene in case others didn’t understand as well. I half expected the last image to be black.
Recently I’ve started lighting my scenes without using the light planes. I read up on some of Zuliban’s posts and have been trying to take his advice. Here are some of his quotes, I’ve interpreted them in my own way and might have the setting wrong.
“i believe to get the best from a image is good to study a bit photgraphy tho i only use 1 light always ,not like vraypanels on windows(give very fake effect) and on ambient always try to use lot of colors and over the range HDR”
“i only use vray psherical light is the best one to simulate light -direct is a very fake one becase it has not automatic falloff and shadows are not based on size of light.. about settings i only use qmc + lc qmc at 45-55 most of the times and lc at 1400”
“all is gemoetry no hdris in any image used, whit HDR i mean out of range like output colors.”
