MjcSkySphere

mcorr

I'd really ike to use MjcSkySphere (available in the freebies section), but can't get it to work. After I load it, the scene renders black, although I am in the sphere and can see the scene mapped to the sphere. Does anybody know what am I doing wrong?

Havos

Are you using iRay or 3Delight? If the former than the dome will block out any light from the sun or HDR, so making the scene black.

scatha

aka, your light is outside of the sphere ...

mcorr

Thanks for the replies. The usuage tips says something about making sure the "ambience" is set to 100% white, which I thought was supposed to light up the scene. In either case, how should I solve the lighting problem? How do I light up the inside of the sphere. Add point light? I can add a headlamp, but it needs to be cranked uo to 500X, which makes the inside of the sphere visible, but I think it will also blow out any object I might put into the scene (because it would be severely overlighted). So, how do I solve these problems? By the way, I am using iRay.

Havos

You need to apply an iRay uber shader to the dome, and then set the dome emissive, but this normally washes out the sky/clouds etc of the dome, which defeats the point of using a dome. The other option is to make the dome translucent (try 0.3) and this lets light through from the HDR and some of the dome's original texture will be seen. Not ideal though. iRay is not designed to use a Skydome, most people use HDR's, but I have this product, and it works very well:

http://www.daz3d.com/iray-worlds-skydome

mcorr

Got it. Thanks! I'll try that. Maybe fiddling with a combo of emissive and translucent will do the trick. It's worth experimenting because this option allows me to do something that has a huge advantage: Google Street Maps can be mapped to the dome. In other words, instant scenes in front of worldwide beaches, or wild downtown cities, etc. I'll mess with this some more and report my progress later.