Lighting with HDRI

[tmccarter]

Hey all,

 

I was just wondering if anyone has experienced this problem: I've got GI in my outdoor scene, with only a max override GI skylight in the vray settings - no other lights. First I have it set as a color and it looks great. Then I try swapping it for a vrayHDRI, and I get a very strange look. The HDRI is of a partly cloudy sky, purchased from Archvision. My resulting scene is dark as night in some spots, with bright circles of light scattered about. I've attached a render to show you what I mean (see "scene_hdr.jpg"). Has anyone seen this? Do I have a bad HDR image? Am I setting something wrong in Vray? Any advice is much appreciated. Thanks!

 

-Tim

[JamesTaylor]

When you are rendering it with the HDRI map in the GI Skylight slot of the vray settings are you also un-ticking the render default lights check box in the Global Switches section?

 

in any viz / max file the defaults are present until a light is placed in the scene(or you switch them off), the default lights are located from the position that you are viewing the scene from and may be what is mainly lighting the building.

 

When using HDRI in Vray i bring a HDRI map into the material editor, set it to be an environment map and then instance it into the environment panel - GI Skylight / override max. i never use the vrayHDRI and it works fine.