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Specific Iray Lighting Questions

Collective3dCollective3d Posts: 446
edited December 1969 in The Commons

Hey folks, hoping someone can help out with some specific questions regarding lighting in Iray.

I have played around with the photometric spots and point lights pretty successfully, as well as the new camera settings (EV, film speed, etc), as they're not too much different from the IRay package in 3ds Max, and I'm really digging the new options.

However, I've read through a number of the how-to and general tips posts here without much luck on figuring out how the sun dial light and global illumination/ambient lighting work in general.

For instance, I notice that with no lights in the scene at all, I have control over things like time of day, latitude and longitude of the light, etc, however with no visual indication in the viewport what local direction the light is coming from. When I add a sun dial to the scene, I gain a visual indication of where the light is coming from, and there's an obvious change in the lighting itself, but I no longer have any control over the azimuth or direction of the light itself.

Needless to say, it's been confusing me a little. Does anyone have any information or links to information specifically regarding the sun light feature itself? Would be terribly grateful for any help :)

Thanks!

Comments

  • BeeMKayBeeMKay Posts: 7,019
    edited December 1969

    I think you control the positioning through the sun-dial when you activated it, similar to how you'd move a distant light?
    Not certain, though... I've always worked without the sund-dial, using sme quick renders to see if the light was coming from the right direction....

  • evilded777evilded777 Posts: 2,482
    edited December 1969

    If you want to use the Sun dial, you need to expand it in your scene pane and then drill down to the Sun Chain. The parameters on the Sun Chain give you direct control over Elevation and Azimuth.

    Nifty little tool, I use it all the time.

  • Collective3dCollective3d Posts: 446
    edited December 1969

    evilded777 said:
    If you want to use the Sun dial, you need to expand it in your scene pane and then drill down to the Sun Chain. The parameters on the Sun Chain give you direct control over Elevation and Azimuth.

    Nifty little tool, I use it all the time.

    I actually JUST found that! Thanks!

  • TenmaruTenmaru Posts: 105
    edited December 1969

    forgive me if I'm missing something really obvious, but how to add Sun Dial in the scene ?

  • DaWaterRatDaWaterRat Posts: 2,885
    edited May 2015

    And how do you see the sun to be sure that's actually where you want it? Or do you just render and fiddle with it seventeen times?

    For that matter, how do you see how the HDRI map is set with an environment dome before you render? (Kinda hard to rotate it if you don't know what you're rotating where)

    Post edited by DaWaterRat on
  • Richard HaseltineRichard Haseltine Posts: 107,969
    edited December 1969

    You can see HDR dome images and so on in the new Iray preview mode. If you don't have a good nVidia card I recommend using it in the Aux Viewport

  • DaWaterRatDaWaterRat Posts: 2,885
    edited December 1969

    Richard Haseltine said:
    You can see HDR dome images and so on in the new Iray preview mode. If you don't have a good nVidia card I recommend using it in the Aux Viewport

    Ah. I had missed that (since I almost never change my viewport settings)

    Thank you

  • Collective3dCollective3d Posts: 446
    edited December 1969

    DaWaterRat said:
    Richard Haseltine said:
    You can see HDR dome images and so on in the new Iray preview mode. If you don't have a good nVidia card I recommend using it in the Aux Viewport

    Ah. I had missed that (since I almost never change my viewport settings)

    Thank you

    As someone stated above, you probably will need a really good nVidia card to handle the Iray preview in the viewport. My GTX 750ti struggles with it mighty fierce.

  • CypherFOXCypherFOX Posts: 3,401
    edited December 1969

    Greetings,
    I use the Aux Viewport for render previews; the nice thing about HDRI's is that they show up almost immediately, it's just the geometry that takes a bit to fill in.

    -- Morgan

  • Cris PalominoCris Palomino Posts: 12,455
    edited December 1969

    In the interest of keeping information where people can find it, we're pointing people to this thread which takes you to threads where you can get more information and ask questions.

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