Help a guy out with MR

[taprice]

I am continually trying to make MR work and am starting from scratch on a new project. I have a standard sunlight and skylight. I wanted a background so I inserted a skydome and map. With the skydome off everything is peachy, with the skydome in place the skylight has no effect just the dirict light. Is there something I'm missing? I'm sure I am missing something so any suggestions would be appreciated.

 

Tim

[taprice]

Images for reference...

[vizwhiz]

Taprice

 

i Think skylight works only when FinalGather is ON

 

**

 

i just recently download a Mental Ray book pdf form

written by Joep van der Steen, Starting with Mental Ray

 

http://cgarchitect.vismasters.com/catalog/viewproduct.aspx?product=3610

 

you can get This here at cgarchitect.com VIZ Masters store

 

**

 

i am still reading Thru This, it is quite informative

as i am just now beginning To Tackle This cg beast

 

maybe The Title could be "Staring with Mental Ray"

 

Randy

mental randy

[lambros]

Generally speaking, skylight will not have any effect inside a closed surface. Also in mental ray, you should activate Final Gathering to use the skylight, as said. You should either drop the idea of a skylight, or find a walkaround for the dome concept. Render with alpha and composite a sky later, use a plane or bended (cylindrical) mesh for sky plane or something else.

[taprice]

Thanks guys. I am rendering with Final Gather on but I wanted to place the background image relative to the sunlight which is the reason I switched to the dome. With it set as my background image it rotated around with the camera view. I will work around it unless anyone else has another solution.