Having trouble with skydomes
Philippi_Child
Posts: 658
I'm having trouble with the rendering of skydomes and any product that uses a sphere much like ultramarine ocean, which uses a sphere for the ocean. My problem is I load a scene up using a skydome and then render it and all I get is black. Even using the camera presets on objects within the dome I still get black renders. If I remove or hide the skydome or sphere then everything I have in the scene can be seen. Put the skydome back and I get black renders again. Is there a setting in the render settings I'm missing?
Thanks
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Skydomes are used in 3Delight, they are set to cast no shadows, thanks to 3DL being a biased renderer. You can't do that in IRay (easily) because it uses a virtual skydome (rendersettings tab/environment). So either render in 3DL or delete the dome and use a HDRI or sun/sky settings!
Hi Sven
Ah yes thanks still pretty new to DS I appreciate your help.
With the small problem of the basic Iray sky - "sun-sky only" setting - having no clouds which often come on domes...
I sometime render the pure empty skydome with 3delight, then render the scene with "sun-sky" but with the dome turned off... and then add the two together in Gimp. The best of two worlds..
It might be better to move to using HDRIs if you're using Iray.
There's a link here for free ones. Be aware that HQ ones are quite large in file size.
Also be aware that using them successfully presents another somewhat steep learning curve for someone new to DS... trial and error.
How to get a different sun direction and daytime when using HDRI? 'Cause that's one of the reasond I don't use them much...
Sometimes I would want a certain part of the HDRI as the background for my picture, but have the sun coming from a different direction than the HDRI offers... for longer shadows for example..
I have had a MODICUM of success in using SOME sky domes in IRay originally used for 3Delight.
Turn the surfeace of your skydome into an IRay surface and choose emmision color white (or to taste). Crank the Luminence WAY up.
Sometimes you also have to put an HDRI light around it, don't draw the dome and make your skydome opacity 50% OR SO.
Regular blue skies still seem off with this method but starry and stormy /cloudy skies look good.
That is an interesting question. I would probably play with the environment intensity settings so I would have the image without much light, then set up a light rig as the sun (maybe a distant light or spotlight depending on the effect).
Since I am not at my DS computer at the moment, I am not sure if this is even something that would work. But this is now something that I am going to try because I find myself in similar situations - the look I want and the light I want don't match...
The quick answer is on the Render editor tab, there are controls to rotate, tilt, raise and lower the HDRI "dome" so that you can choose the direction of the light. The ground setting at the bottom has two settings, manual which makes the characters feet fett rest niscely on the ground, or auto which has the haracter float a little above. You can also turn off the HDRI so that you just get the effect the light and use a background in the render environment tab.
So I got home and did my test. Messing with anything to do with the HDRI light intensity also made the background image get dark. But I figured out a quick and dirty way to get the effect you are looking for, with some inspiration from nemesis10's post.
First, I loaded the HDRI (I used Dry Field from HDRI Haven) and found the background look I wanted. I rendered that with nothing else in the scene, so I ended up with a properly-sized image of the backdrop. Then I added the scene object and rotated the HDRI until I got the shadow I wanted. Finally, I loaded the image I had made as a backdrop using the Environment pane (not the section in "Render Settings"). This covers up the HDRI dome image, and let me have the dome rotation I want without the lighting changing.
Here is how the image would look if I simply rotated the HDRI for the background look I wanted:
And here is the final render, using the pre-rendered empty HDRI as a backdrop
This shows the Environment Pane in the event you need to find it (this assumes the City Limits Lite workspace).
Hope this helps.
Jepp, it does.. now I just have to hunt for some free HDRIs showing the region where my scenes are set
I wanted to mention another product that I love: IBL Master https://www.daz3d.com/ibl-master-for-daz-studio which is amazingly useful for both 3delight and Iray users. For Iray users, when you have the invisible prop in the scene, you can actually see the HDRI skydome before render, you can rotate the prop and rotate the HDRI, the prop contains fill lights so you would be able to light the chair with a fill light with the shadows you want in one pass.... plus I gather it does wonderful things with 3Delight which I don't use. I really don't miss skydomes at all...