Problem with aligning HDRI and Direct Light

[ediskujovic]

I have this big scene with around 24 houses and I set it up with HDRI lighting, but wanted a bit more control so I added Direct Light. The problem is that I cant align the shadows on the whole scene. For example the HDRI and Direct light are perfectly align on the right side but on the left side the shadows are quite off. I would appreciate it if someone knew how can I solve this?

 

The settings on direct light: Shadows On Vray Shadows, Multiplier 11; bias 02, Area shadow cheked; Sphere

Thanks

[Chris MacDonald]

Sounds like your direct light is either too close (and thus the shadows aren't lining up because of parallax) or you need to use a VRay Sun instead, and line that up.

[landrvr1]

I'd also add that while I understand perfectly the desire to have a direct light or sun, I would encourage you to tweak your HDRI image and adjust the settings so that you will never really need another main light source again for exterior work. One trick, and there's a few tutorials out there on this, would be to open up your HDRI image in Photoshop. Select your sun (you may need to turn down the exposure setting temporarily to see the sun outline). After you've selected paint a pure white over the existing circumference. Save that as separate file and load. You will have more brightness and/or more defined shadows.

 

You can get a huge amount of control by simply tweaking that original HDRI image, and won't have to fiddle with any other main exterior light sources again. (unless you are going for some very specific effects, of course).

[Chris MacDonald]

Perhaps just start by changing the gamma of the HDRI to increase/decrease the contrast in the shadows.

[ediskujovic]

Thanks Chris. It worked just fine, I guess i didnt know enough about direct light. I tried to solve it by increassing gamma and overall multiplier to soften the shadows and hence make them almost none visible. However moving the source much further from the scene was much easier.

 

I never heard of that technique before, I guess Ill try it. I was constantly messing with the hdri settings and never seem to achive the sharp shadows that people talk about. Thanks for the tip

[Nic H]

it will always look weird with an hdri and sun casting direct light

just use one good quality hdri (you might need to try a few to get the desired sun elevation)