Lighting with HDRI and V-Ray Sun

The Ultimate Vray Materials Course: gumroad.com/l/...
Vray Lighting Course: gumroad.com/l/...
Learn how to add HDRI images and control the light that will light up your exterior scenes in 3ds Max and V-Ray.
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[@daniyaldk946]

back in and recently got soft soft again, it felt strange and i had previously just taught myself the software. Finding your videos is helping

[@Blake-ln6nn]

why didnt i find these damn tutorials a year ago...could have cut my learning curve from mental ray to vray in half...these are soo detailed and just well narrated...every step. thanks again for taking the time to make these...

[@HURSAs]

Just for your ease - there is a nice little CheckBox under the Texture Rollout in the DomeLight settings called "Lock to dome orientation" - that does all the work with linking the Rotation of the HDRI Texture to the DomeLight pivot point ;)

[@DenisKeman]

This would have been a useful info to know back like 4 years ago when i made the video :)

[@DenisKeman]

Well as the title says, Lighting with HDRI. That is the reason why there is no shading with textures and materials. Though that is a nice idea so i might make a shading tutorial in the future.

[@samrobot6]

Your videos are really useful ,i really apperciate them as a person who is trying to learn rendering on her own

[@radarmustafa]

Hey Denis, I had problem with my setup. When i linked the textures horizontal rotation to the the dome light, the Hdri got rotated to 0 degrees. I have been getting this problem and it is causing dual shadows and illumination, one from the sun and one from the Hdri. I refer to the step at 18:03. Once i connect my Hdri goes to zero degrees. Great Tutorial you have here, very solid narration and easy to understand. This has helped me up my quality greatly. Thanks!

[@vijitsharma5102]

your videos are the best for learning 3ds max and v ray rendering !!!!!!!!

[@JavierOropeza08]

Great Video, one of the better one's I have seen on the subject. This is something I usually have to look up because I do not do renderings too often and I forget. I find its easier to use the dials within the HDRI rotation than to actually rotate the physical light, but it is essentially the same thing. I have not seen all your videos but I would like to bring up color space and how it affects HDRIs. I am still using vray 2.2, but I think this affects the later versions. Anyways, some HDRIs are set to different color spaces, and by default the VrayHDRI map is set to inverse gamma with a gamma of 1.0 ( this is already assuming you have max gamma set to 2.2). I was recently follow your videos and IT was working, but I was not getting the sky to look as blue as I wanted, and adjusting the rendering multiplier was not really helping. I found out that my HRDI was using sRGB Color space and a gamma of 2.2. So I had to compensate the Inverse gamma to .4545. This affects the renderings Multiplier, as the value tends to be lower. Again, you may have touched upon this on another video, but I just wanted to have this written just in case any one came across it, or to give you ideas for a future video regarding color space/gamma and how to correct/deal with it. Thanks for the great videos!

[@DenisKeman]

+Javier Oropeza Thanks for your rather lengthy reply, it was a nice read. I do agree about the HDRI sRGB space issue, but i think that in the future i might do another video about color correcting EXR 32 bit HDRI's and control the lighting by tweaking the actual HDRI image. In the end it all falls down on how much time i have, and what i need to do first. Even though it does look like i make videos about everything, later on the bigger picture will reveal that i will have a base of info that i can call upon when touching up on more complex themes.

[@hameedbusari6685]

Thank you so much for the time you take to explain the topic clearly.God bless you sir

[@keithyakouboff8755]

I have questions and I do not know where else to ask them. The Chaos tutorials do not seem to cover these topics, and I am having a really hard time finding youtube tutes on them. Background... I'm trying to create my first project using Max and V-Ray. (I was a Maya generalist from about 2002, but in late 2016 my employment options hit a wall. I noticed the Max / V-Ray combo out there a lot in the job ads, and so decided it was time to add these two to my repertoire.) For a practice project, I picked an architectural (city skyscraper) rendering. I now have the building modeled and textured to a point where I feel it's ready to place against a photograph. 1) There does not appear to be a way to place an image into a camera image plane in Max, or at least into a V-Ray camera. Believe me, I've looked. Maya does this easily. I need this to position and light my building, plus to position shadow geo,... which leads me to my next question. 2) Is there a way to create a shader that will only render shadows cast on or by other objects? The old background material in Maya did this well. Is there a V-Ray equivalent? Going back to the image plane problem, I put in a polygonal plane, textured it with my background photo, and aligned it perfectly to the camera. Problems include a) the plane being blown out by the scene's lights and there being no way I know of to turn on some sort of light linking, and b) I cannot figure out how to child the plane to the camera as a parent so that the image doesn't get disturbed when I need to tweak my camera. Sorry for the long post, and thanks. If there's a better place to ask something like this, please let me know.

[@postmodernerkindergartner960]

Reeally nice stuff, thx! I just struggled with ending up having 2 shadows..but i figured my HDRi maps sun was 2strong and i didn't need to set up my own sun i guess

[@AMITSINGH-bt7bs]

Very well teaching and excellent clear concept

[@BishopDesigns1]

good tut. thanks for sharing. btw, i think "lock dome to orientation" or "lock texture to icon" could have taken care of the need to do any parameter wiring

[@aliasghar-or4iw]

hello sir, hope you are good. your tutorials is very nice sir . learnd lot of thinks from your tutorials i like all the things.

[@netrarajpun]

just love ur videos..! how to see many more for a long time.. neva tired of watching :D

[@3d_mihai]

Restarted everything, It's all good. Nice tutorial, thanks!

[@subinjoseph4570]

Helped a lot watching this. Thanks a lot man

[@aliasghar-or4iw]

hi, sir make one tutorial night exterior scean with detail, like ies ligh invoirment means compleat night sean. i think this tutorial will be helpfull us.thanks.

[@jofyansar6524]

Very useful video sir superb presentation really nice sir please upload more detailed videos about v ray sun v ray physical camera and v ray lights

[@DenisKeman]

Well as i am writing this i am working on a full on course that will cover all the questions that you might have. So if everything goes ok it should be live in a short time.

[@jofyansar6524]

@@DenisKeman thanks in advance sir please upload a video with exterior rendering of a house with pargola lights spot lights ies lights

[@CloudVisionPro]

Thanks man! This helped so much!!

[@zahidbhatkar7105]

please make tutorial on multipass compositing in vray and post-production in photoshop in (Exr file) .

[@3d_mihai]

3ds Max 2017... needed to go for -horizontalRotation and in the right side Z_Rotation+90. Tried a few times.

[@NoName-tk7yl]

Hi Denis. Again, your videos are GREAT! Clear and useful. Please let me bother you with two questions. Is there any real diference between a VRay Sun and a Direct Light (correctly setted with Vray Shadow) ? Do you ever use de GI Enviroment (The one at the VRay Render set up)? Long time ago, I learned to easily iluminate and control light & shadows on exterior scene with only those two elements. I would really apreciate your opinion. Sorry for my endless comment :)

[@timlesspink]

this was a very interesting approach, btw i did´t know the linking park I mean part=) RIP LP

[@user-rj8ln7gy9w]

σπουδαίος δάσκαλος = great teacher

[@lMicakil]

Thats great, thanks. Good lightning is what can make render look nice and alive, so i wouldn't mind more tutorial about that ;)

[@DenisKeman]

+lMicakil I'll see that i do make a few more tutorials about lighting exteriors and interiors alike. It all kinda depends on the free time i have to spend on making the videos.

[@ExacoMvm]

15:06 that makes no sense, no matter where dome is placed it has no difference. Well its a old video, so you propably already know. To align the sun to hdri sun, just simply click on the cube, front left etc till you can see the sun, if you cant just increase the FoV, then simply add a vraysun ( very far away - just zoom out the top viewport and drag the sun fron very corner ) then simply align with HDRI using move tool and then youre done - no matter from what position or angle you are looking at the sun/hdri it will be 100% aligned.

[@MinhNguyen-gi7qq]

Great video. Itz very helpful. Thank you!

[@Bebo1389]

But I got a problem: after having used the Wire Parameters to connect the HDRI texture with the VrayDome Light+Vray Sun( these 2 previously linked), the HDRI changes its rotation and so the Vray Sun isn't anymore in the direction of the "Sun" of the HDRI texture ( I don't know If it's clear...). It probably depends on the HDRI coordinates, but I have no idea how to fix them....Very nice video!

[@ic.xc.]

Can we please start using the Slate Editor, it's so much better for tutorials, and to see what you're working on. Cheers. Plus Shouldn't you be using Brute Force as secondary engine for exterior renders and light cache for interiors, since LC only shows you what you "see" .

[@DenisKeman]

+Marçus Keil Well first thing about using the Slate Editor .. i might start doing some videos with the Slate Editor, but then again since i have been using the Standard Material editor i do feel more at ease with it. In the future though when i start tackling on more complex materials i might do them in the Slate Editor. Cheers for your feedback on that one

[@vickigao4870]

it's dope, thanks!!!

[@Blake-ln6nn]

i figured it out lol. turns out i had a material that was not allowing the light in thru the glass for some reason...odd because i use it all the time for my scenes without issue...so i wonder if it has something to do with the linking of the lighting systems...

[@CatDog-yep]

awesome

[@atulpatel4805]

lol, denis, you solved my problem. its really eazy . thank you soooooooo much for tutorial

[@user-xc9zg5dp4z]

Grazie

[@AnkurKumar-ci8wu]

Hey hi Denis It was amazing tutorial. Thanks a lot for this. I am facing one issue in this regarding environment, I did all set up but i wanted to change my background in renders how can we change that but keeping all hdri parameter. i tried changing the background in background parameter but didn't work. can you guide me for this.

[@mariaj6631]

Help me please! I follow all steps in the video but when I get to "Wire Parameters" this happens: I click transform / rotation / rotation z , then the dotted line appears and I click on the VRayLight dome again, but at this point I do not see the option "transform" or "object" again! It directly opens the parameter wiring!!

[@charom9155]

hi need help, the dome is rotating the opposite way of the HDRI one goes left other goes right why ?

[@omrawat6220]

great teacher thanks you sir then my big problem solution

[@mohsenebrahimi9454]

its cool, tnx a lot

[@user-jx3pj8vy1h]

Thank you, my friend!

[@ejazkarim6304]

thanks for perfect lesson

[@EMAcademy2201]

so sNice tutorialt like that

[@MinLyan]

Denis, thank for perfect lesson!!!

[@-Aeveris-]

Does anyone know, how I can set the horizon line of the HDRI image lower or higher?

[@PaulElderDesign]

I have a problem. I accidentally wired my Dome light to another object. Is it possible to undo in the wire parameters rollout? If so how? :/

[@jatinvadgama9120]

hello sir , my hdri is not visible in viewport .viewport i s totally white so please guide me sir.

[@phanigurram]

Do we need to give Color to sun?

[@abusalem1921]

really nice i like your tutorial but how can i get more realistic result

[@3d_mihai]

And after adding the sun, almost all the image becomes white. No exposure setting can fix it.

[@kuralarasanmech4078]

Is the download link safe from tNice tutorials video?

[@VaiSoulGarden]

Thank you so much Sir!

[@designsoultionsjkv272]

Hi Denis, I am having trouble with V ray Physical Camera, I have the same version of Vray 3.20.02 but while click on the camera under vray I dont have the option as physical camera, but I have separate menu as physical camera ... still there is no basic parameters to edit the white balance and shutter speed. Can you please help me to solve.. is there any setting issue ..

[@lukaboskovic1251]

Great tutorial!!! Maybe is too long but still good!

[@kurd1stan218]

idk, shadows seems completely unrealistic because of having 2 main light sources

[@artnovikovdotru]

Why didn't you delete the Dome light, having added the Sun? Sun is already there, then there shouldn't be any other light of the same purpose.

[@malikaahmed8125]

thanxxxxx

[@FarhaNzAsyraf]

good explaination

[@3d_mihai]

Update: it doesn't work. I rotate like 30 degrees, background moves only about 10. Great delay with i7 and GTX 980

[@kira-js8tq]

hi master, when i put the vray sun, my screen become white.... why happen it always to me ...why ....

[@Blake-ln6nn]

Hi Denis, i loved this tutorial. i setup a seperate file for each one of my HDRI skies in my library and now im going back and linking the sun for more control...i have a question which i hope you can answer... im currently using this method to light and interior daylight scene...works great...i have a bunch of glass (1/2" thick) as a seperate component...which i hide when testing the lighting so the sun/HDRI can penetrate through... after tuning my lighting to my liking i turned the glass component back on and assigned a glass material...now it seems the lighting is not penetrating into the room though the glass...ive never had this problem before...i turn the glass back off and render...bam...shadows pop back in the interior...weird? do you have any thoughts? i can take screen shots and send them to you if you could graciously look at them... again i really appreciate your time!!!

[@TheHamaOnline]

in the glass material under refraction, make sure "affect shadows" is checked, that might do it

[@rehishtk]

Hai blake if you get the answer pls tell the answer to me.

[@Blake-ln6nn]

do you always light with a material override then move onto materials after the lighting is setup?

[@arkiwitch]

Thanks!

[@arslanraza5369]

Thankx alot sir

[@ramyapidugu5720]

Thankyou SIR...

[@onetwoby4]

Amazing!

[@user-vb7mf5cb3k]

wow, great man!

[@vithikasharma416]

plz share screen shot of camera and render parameter than it will help more ......thanx

[@DenisKeman]

That would be kinda hard to do seeing as how this video was produced like 3 and a half years ago so i no longer have that scene

[@dorpho55]

best video ever!!! congrets!!!

[@fractalelement857]

but my background image is too large, how can i resize it ?

[@rameshk9894]

why at a end of video there is not a render with texture,materials,....the video is incomplete without it.

[@lukaboskovic1251]

+Ramesh kamble because the video is about light settings and not about materials, and its pretty faster to test the render in overlay mtl.

[@DenisKeman]

+Luka Boskovic You deserve a cookie :) Thanks for answering the question before i got the chance to read it

[@DejmianArt]

Great !

[@gmiang6093]

sir,kindly tell me how to download vray hdri plugin?

[@maagfx]

Super

[@marianaavila3492]

i have 3dmax 2018, and even if a put the sun , it doesn't appears on render, the only light that works is hdri sky, so what could be the problem?

[@DenisKeman]

It doesn't render the Vray sun light ?

[@rrr51252]

Oooooo thank you, i love u!!!

[@gmiang6093]

sir,kindly tell me how to download vray hdri?

[@tjugolapp]

I'm having problems with the wire parameter, i follow every step but when I am to click on the dome once again the minimenu doesnt show instead the wire parameter popups at once. The one time I did manage to follow all steps i dont have ''Vraylight001|Vraylight001'' instead my popup menu has For example Vraylight001|World... Pls help.. Very helpful tutorial in overall!:)

[@DenisKeman]

I will be honest it's either that it's kinda late that i'm reading this or it's something else but i really can't understand what the actual problem is here

[@tjugolapp]

Well not sure how to put it really.. But for example when I manage to add wire parameter the hdr map resets it's rotation..

[@DenisKeman]

I think i know what you are talking about ... It's basically the HDRI creation. When you create the light make sure you right click and finish the creation process, then select the light and start making changes. That should fix your issue

[@abrahanmanuelromanyturriza8184]

How’s it going?

[@rosaochoa-mendoza4759]

Iv sen it like 20 times

[@AMY20006]

HELP anybody please.. When i click the option view image as background .. instead of showing the hdri image it goes black.. why it is happening.. Please anybody ??

[@syedshahrukh6662]

@AMY20006 can you send me the file so that i can check what's the problem..

[@AMY20006]

@Syed ShahRukh brother.. thank you very much... i got the issue.. it was about the server pack... now its clear... thanks alot

[@syedshahrukh6662]

@AMY20006 Ohh that's Good then. Happy Rendering 😄

[@AMY20006]

Haha.. thanku.. can we exchange some contact in case i need some help in future...

[@syedshahrukh6662]

@@AMY20006 Ya sure. Just give me your email i'll msg you there.btw.where are you from.

[@syncopat1337]

when i apply sun my textures get burned ;/ they render cyan

[@DenisKeman]

+syncopat1337 Make sure you are using a V-Ray camera, and also check your Color Correction settings. Usually the color burn is due to the Color Correction or using a standard camera. For the Cyan renders i would have to see an image to get an idea, but make sure that V-Ray licence is not acting up

[@syncopat1337]

hey i figured. i just installed 3.2 and accidentally switched on white balance correction in vray frame buffer :)

[@DenisKeman]

syncopat1337 There you go :)

[@iyann5334]

Who else got a unison content ad

[@BertWithoutErnie]

My hdri and sun moves opposite. I followed everything.

[@marianaavila3492]

mine too!, any explanation?

[@denisjakusev1170]

your rotation method must be set to local try switching it to world

[@rosaochoa-mendoza4759]

Se en like 20 times to find out.....🙂

[@bacazterchovej2235]

dont get me wrong but your "cutted" talking is hard to hear , just let your words flowing smoothly , pls