Hi everyone, been reading a lot on this forum and i have nt found any good post on vray sun and physical camera for exterior animation, some for interior but does nt quite apply for exterior, the question is in the title obviously, im having a hard time to callibratre the sun and the cam with the sky and over all image balance, shadows darkness and white balance, somehow it doesnt feel like doing the real thing but more of a post process on the level\brightness contrast on the image. im working with the cinematic camera since its animated and been playing around mostly with the f-number and film iso, working with the 2.2 gamma technique…So what work for you?
???nobody do exterior animation with 1.5??
I use reinhard for it, might make things easiar.
I dont use the cinematic camera so I cant help you with shutter times, Ive got no idea how it relates.
am i miussing something…usally response here is pretty quick, usally i dont need to post…or is it because i dont post much that i dont get an answer!? anyway ill be waiting…thanks for any suggestion, lead…anything!
Were not going to tell you how to do your job from scratch, tell us how far youve got yourself and we’ll go from there. Show some shots of your scene, give more information on your settings and put a bit of effort in.
Theres been a lot of this recently. Settings vary from scene to scene, you shouldnt be relying on any one set of ‘magic settings’.
…:Were not going to tell you how to do your job from scratch…did nt ask for that, i was just asking for general setup for an exterior scene as they are a lot of comparisons for the inside animation…heres a pic with my settings as you ask, you ll see in the firs frame(first pic the grey house) the lighting is not that bad but when i get further in the animation i have a house that is much lighter in the color scheme but the light is much too bright too much burn…just asking for general lead for sun-physical camera because it doesnt appear to react as the real thing like it is suppopsed to…looks more of post on the level, brightness\contrast more then anything!
Not that my basic parameter are not for final quality, this is only for review as it s faster and good enough to see the final output.
thanks in advance for any input!
Animation
What kind of rendering farm do you have to have displacement on the grass and all that meshed foliage? It is hard to believe that it is from the same model just a different frame.
glorybound:It is hard to believe that it is from the same model just a different frame.
What do you mean? The first model the grey house is at the start of my animation, the lighter house is 3 house further up the street in my animation, it was just to show the difference in lighting.
For the render farm question :we have something like 85 computer on the render farm with the vray 1.5 with decent cpu and ram.
Sun/Sky
I see.. I thought it was the back side of the same house. I look foward to seeing a final clip of the animation.
Apologies, I assumed from the lack of information that you didnt have any to show. Not my best move, it seems.
I havent used cinematic camera at all in my animations. Is it supposed to be used for animations or is it just intended to match cinematic camera parameters?
Anyway, I would adjust lighting levels as much as possible with Vraycam and leave tweakings for postproduction. Dont worry too much about burn areas as they can be fixed in post easily. Render to 32 bit image and adjust intensities to suit your needs in combustion, fusion, shake, nuke, etc…
In real life, u would be adjusting f-stops interactively and hoping to get it right the first time. In post, u can play safely till u get rid of burn zones and get a even lighting scheme. Of course, it will have to be animated through the walkthrough, increasing and decreasing levels and exposure for white levels, black, levels, etc. Not a big deal, really.
Hope it helps! 
P.S. 85 computers :shock:
What do you use for your trees and plants ?
Thx for any advice, for the tree i use onyx at start get in max and work the tree from there, create flowers and scatter in the tree with the last set of brach using id, im also optimizing those trees the max i can until its acceptable visually. If anyone else doing exterior animation with 1.5 like to hear your tought about sun and physical camera.
About animating the levels etc in post would be kind of hard to do here since we have a big workflow and project does nt have much time for in post prod, i would personnaly take more time in post but not my choice, got to live with it. I just want to find a good balance with the sun an cam.
Thx, have a good day and a good week! 
Haven’t had time to try this with the Vray Physical Camera, but in real life an ASA of 800 would only be used for dark interiors. Try a lower ASA like 125 for example and compensate the f-stop
Well, there’s something i don’t quite get.
Do you go about, in real life, shooting outdoor, clear-sky midday-lit shots with an 800iso film?
I’d say i’d use a 100iso one, and compensate for that with a lower F-number.
Also, aperture times will linearly influence the amount of light that gets in, small ones generally are more contrasted, high ones tend to wash the picture out a bit more under unvarying contour conditions(iso/F).
I prepared a script that changes Isos automatically to balance a frame, and it can work for animations too (turning on autoKey, and rendering at different frames).
It’s a departure from the full usage of all the camera parameters (f-stops and exposure timings aren’t touched, so no animation setting gets messed up in the process), but when used properly it will balance your shot correctly.
Have a look at it here:
http://www.chaosgroup.com/forum/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=16553&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0
And further down the second page there’s some more in-depth ranting about its usage.
Hope it helps,
Lele
I would have thought if anything you’d fix your f-stop so you get no depth of field (f-11 or up) and use your shutter to compensate for the amount of light - again this doesnt really matter if you have motion blur and depth of field turned off though.
Remember in the “Real World” you would have a film stock. If you are in the field you probably wont be switching films too often. So you set up your scene based on that standard. Then you only have 1 or 2 valid exposure options.
If you can change your film stock you have many more ways of exposing the stock to the SAME amount of light to take the same image.
SutdioDim:Well, there’s something i don’t quite get.
Do you go about, in real life, shooting outdoor, clear-sky midday-lit shots with an 800iso film?
Thats my point, in real life with thoses camera setup the image should be overexposed! But its not in vray, so why all those setup to fit a real camera but it does nt react like a real one?
Thanks for you answer StudioDim i will take a look shortly at your pointer, ill come back to post on it later.