Anyone use Iray Worlds Skydome? or similar skydome products???
Griffin Avid
Posts: 3,817
Not going to rant about not being able to find a manual or instructions.
Nope. Or raging about how I was trying to load a skydome Iray "Set" and it erased my entire scene.
1) I'm using iray.
2) I want to use a skydome backdrop. (I am doing a 360 render so doing the skies myself (which I like to do) is not my chosen option for today.
3) This prodoct is a bunch of skydomes that are for iray.
4) I want to leave my scene intact and only load a skydome element.
5) I intend to render with DOME ON and have my scene be the Skydome + .....my Scene. lol
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I have gone into the Environment Map in the render pane and only have 1 choice in the shader folder. Every other choice in that folder is textures. No other HDRI files.
Where they be? I have Several products with domes - most render black when used. I know, the thing with iray NOT using skydomes.....
But this is an Iray Product of....skydomes......
I did my google the forum thing and mostly it's all 2015 information.
Certainly we must have moved beyond those complicated workarounds...since...this product is called iray skydomes....
The more I type the calmer I feel. That helped.
Searching my computer for HDRI files leads to lots of separate folders and hits so there seems to be no one place that Daz keeps its iray skydome backdrops. Yay.
HELP!
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Ok, onet thing, the Iray Worlds skydome is a physical skydome, not the one that is used in the iray settings. The skydome part of the set is basically one big light emitter, and there is a separate sun-prop, also an emitter. As such it is not to be used wit h sun-sky or dome settings, basically, you render with 'scene only'
In the Iray SkyDome folder there is a sub folder called '4 Scene Subsets', you can use those in your existing scenes (a subset automatically merges with your scene)...
If needed, you can always hide the ground (base) part, and only the dome visible
Thank you! That helps a lot.
I have both the iray Skydome super Pak and the iRay worlds skydome.
How do I use both thos products to achieve my goals?
Like, literally, step by step.
The Super Pak has "Properties" and "Sets" I assume sets are the ENTIRE SCENE and makes landscape + backdrop.
I hit the "Properties" and nothing happened and I didn't see any changes in any menus.
The Iray Worlds Skydome has nothing but Sets. I see teh shaders, but um ...I should "shade" what?
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The 2015 threads say to shade the skydome, but adding the skydome removes my scene.
-- I went in and placed one of the subset images in the environmental mapa nd changed the settings to SCENE only.
Fingers crossed as the render starts,,,,,
The set is made of 3 separate props, parentedtogether: IR-Base and IR-Sun/IR-Skydome parented to the base
In the Super pak, the 1 scenes folder indeed are full scenes, probably not the ones you want to use
So , 1st load the '1 skydome def' from the Iray Worlds set. In the scene pane select the Skydome prop and then just apply a material preset from the '2 Sky Mats' folder. Same principle for the other 2 props
Just an additional tip: to have a preview of the skydome texture in your viewport (without having to resort to the iray preview window) just attach the texture from the emission colour to the base colour in the surfaces settings tab
Looks like I have to load the "set" first and then MERGE my scene into the composition.
Rendering again, but at least I had a sky this time. Thanks for your help.
I haven't mastered that product, but I do love it and used it on my first Black Kat book cover as a background:
That did it.
Congratulations.
All this information had made it into my personal User-manual-Guide-of-tips-and-tricks
Shheeeshhh,
Hee hee, you're welcome. I just rendered it really big and put it in as a background in post. Sometimes it's just easier to work with everything separately.
thanks for the tips glaseye...i just have it and needed some advice..thanks!
you're welcome
Thanks for the tip. And also for the link in your sig to more Skydome stuff!
I've been struggling with Skydomes for a while, so hopefully the tips in this thread will help me understand how to get them to work properly. The Skydome products I have now often don't seem to work out of the box for me, but somehow I manage to hack them to get them to work...
I literally just worked through this myself yesterday using the Iray Skydome Superpack add-on. One thing I found that works nicely is that you can load the full Iray Worlds Skydome and add the horizon elements you want to keep... in my case it was one of the night city skylines, then hide the dome and sun but keep the horizon element visible, and re-light using a regular environment like Dimension Theory's Skies of Iradience-NIght Skies. That proved to be the best of both worlds, as Skydome's night skies are a bit garish for my taste but lack a real horizon. I then actually went a step further and added a few lower poly building models in the foreground with window lighting added (via emitters) and saved the complete scene as a preset. That way I can pop the whole thing outside different windows on future renders, and when I want to do a "day" version, I'll just turn off the emmiters and substitute the day version of the skyline.
I hope it will be useful for you
. Just remember, my skydome is not setup for Iray; it is ready for use with DS' 3Delight or Poser's Firefly renderers.
Oh, here's a weird little thing I just noticed about the Iray Skydome Superpack: images on one side of the skyline are a mirror image of those other side.... a logical way to get the shadows on both sides to match, I guess, but unfortunately, one of the nearer buildings has a big prominant illuminated sign on the side, so if you aim the camera in that direction, the name is obviously backwards.
It's not just the skyline; the dome also has this 'feature'. The sky is also mirrored, or rather the uv-mapping is such that the skydome-textures, which are not a 360º, but a 180º panorama, is applied twice. One time mirrored (so you may end up having 2 suns in the sky)
The earlier versions of this dome (non iray) als o have this.....
It's a clever way to 'push' detailed sky to where the camera is pointing while having decent ambience for the scene.
You can also load your set and merge to skydome into the scene. (Right click)
Thank you!!