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Hi. In this tutorial, I am going to explain how we can connect a vray sun with an hdri map properly,
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when we want to use these two light sources together in our scene.
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Why do we need to match and connect them?
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Because, if we prefer to have a vray sun and a vray dome light with an hdri map texture assigned to it as the light surface,
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together to create a more realistic environment, and if the hdri map has a visible sun, that means we will have two suns in the scene.
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Then, we need to match the direction of the vray sun with the hdri sun, and connect them together,
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so that, when we want to change the rotation of the hdri map, the vray sun moves with it.
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Now let’s see how we can do it.
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I have prepared this graphic for you to easily understand the logic.
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A dome light is a spherical or hemispherical light source that shines inward at the scene as if from outside the scene extents.
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It is generally used for image-based lighting, using panoramic 360 degree HDR images.
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Now think as if we draw a line from the scene origin point to the center of the sun in the hdri image.
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Then, the vray sun has to be positioned somewhere on this line, in order to be matched directionally.
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By the way, note that the position of the vray sun icon only defines the direction of the vray sun,
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not the real position of the vray sun itself, when rendered.
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The visible vray sun in render is positioned at the same angle but somewhere far from the icon in the scene,
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when not used with an hdri environment map.
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If there is an hdri map as the sky, you can’t see the vray sun in render.
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Now let’s apply this logic to our scene.
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First, create a dome light.
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From vray toolbar, choose vray dome light and click somewhere in the top view viewport.
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Now, let’s assign an hdri map to it.
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Open material editor.
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Under maps.
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With Vray 5, Vray HDRI Map renamed as Vray Bitmap.
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Double click Vray Bitmap.
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Go to parameters and click to choose an HDRI image.
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Locate your HDRI map folder.
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I will use this one.
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Click open.
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Choose the mapping type as spherical.
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Now, we need to assign it as the Dome Light texture map,
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and then as the background environment map.
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Select the Dome Light and go to modify tab of the command panel.
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Click, drag, and drop the bitmap as an instance.
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Open environment window with the shortcut key 8, and do the same.
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Now let’s create a Vray Sun.
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Go to Vray Toolbar.
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Click and drag somewhere like this.
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We are using an HDRI map as the sky. So, we say no for a Vray Sky.
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Now we need to look from origin point to the HDRI sun.
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For this, place a Vray Camera to the scene.
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Create tab.
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Physical camera.
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Look towards the lights.
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Okay. We have created all the objects.
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Now it is time to set up their positions.
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Select all and move them onto the x axis, by using transform type-in coordinate fields, here at the status bar.
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Enter 0 for the y field.
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They are aligned on the x axis now.
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We need to move the Dome Light, the Vray Sun Target and the camera target to the origin point.
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Select these three objects and move them by setting the x value as 0.
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Okay.Let’s turn off the grids now, for a clear view.
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Activate camera view, simply by clicking c.
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Now we need to set up the camera to see the HDRI Sun.
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Move the camera to see the sky.
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Okay. This looks good for now.
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Let’s turn off this grid also.
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The HDRI we used does not have a clear sun.
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So, we need to decrease the value of overall multiplier to see a clear sun.
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Something like 0.05 should work fine.
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Okay. Much better now.
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But we are still not seeing the sun.
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We need to rotate the map by playing with the horizontal rotation value.
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Here it is.
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Click the camera to see the grid of camera field of view.
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I need to center the sun to this vertical line in the middle because it corresponds to x axis.
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Okay, perfect. Now we aligned the HDRI sun with the objects over x axis.
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Next, we will match the direction of the Vray Sun with the HDRI sun.
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To do this, we need to move the Vray Sun over the HDRI sun in the camera view.
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Simply move the Vray Sun upwards.
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Are we done?
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Of course not.
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Because the direction of the camera is different than the direction of the Vray Sun.
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These two lines must be at the same angle as if there is one single line.
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We can easily do that with moving them to the same coordinate numbers for x and z axes.
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Lets round up these numbers for easy entry.
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The same numbers but negative values for the camera.
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Okay. We matched their directions to each other but the HDRI sun has a different direction angle.
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We need to change the z numbers till we have them at the same place in the camera view.
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Let’s try 80.
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Good but not exactly.
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Yes, that is okay.
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Now we matched the suns properly.
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This is like a single line and we are looking the HDRI sun from a point on this line.
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What we need to do next is, to create a connection between the Vray Sun and the HDRI map
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so that if we rotate the map, we don’t lose the matching we have done.
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We will create an indirect connection over the Dome Light.
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First, we will link the Vray Sun to the Dome Light, and then,
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We will use the parameter wiring feature for connecting the z rotation of the Dome Light, to the horizontal rotation of the HDRI map.
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But before doing the linking, we need to equalize these rotation values.
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The positive or the negative rotation directions for the Dome Light and the HDRI map are reverse.
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So, for the positive rotation value of the map, we are going to set the same number but as negative for the light.
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Minus 36.4.
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Okay, now let’s do the linking.
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I am going to link not only the Vray Sun, but also the camera to the Dome Light,
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in order to be able to easily check from the camera view that the connections are okay.
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We can use the select and link command but I will show you a more practical way.
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Open Scene Explorer panel.
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I am using the shortcut key d, but you can open it from here on the main toolbar.
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Make sure you are at the hierarchy mode.
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Here we see a list of existing objects in the scene.
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To link one object to another, just click the object, and drag and drop it over the target one.
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Link Vray Sun to its target.
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Link the camera to the camera target.
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Then link both targets to the Dome Light.
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Now the linking is done.
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It works as child, parent, child, parent, and grandparent.
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To unlink any object, just drag it to somewhere empty.
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Now let’s check the linking.
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Rotate the Dome Light.
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And yes, the others are also rotating.
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Next, we are going to connect the HDRI to this rotation.
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Open parameter wire dialog window.
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I have added it here to quad menu, but, it can also be opened from animation menu group, under wire parameters.
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For the left parameter, let’s choose the Vray Dome Light.
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Under transform, rotation, and click z rotation.
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For the right parameter,
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Environment, texture map, and click horizontal rotation.
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Add a minus for z rotation of the light, because, as I said before, the turning directions are not the same.
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Let’s do it as a two way connection.
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This way, both parameter changes affect the other one.
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Click connect to complete the connection.
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Let’s check it over both the light and the map.
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When rotating the Dome Light, the HDRI map turns with it.
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Rotate the map, and yes, the Dome Light and the Vray Sun rotate with it, keeping the suns together.
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Now let’s have a look at the scene from a perspective view.
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Notice that the directions of the suns remain equal to each other.
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Okay. We have set up the connection as we wanted it to be.
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Now before ending this tutorial, there are two more things I want to show you.
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Let’s create a simple scene for this.
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A couple of boxes is enough.
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Let’s add a Vray plane.
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Okay. A simple view.
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Assign a Vray material to the boxes.
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Select both.
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And assign it.
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Let’s change the color a little bit.
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Change the overall multiplier back to 1.
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Let’s choose a green color for the Vray plane.
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Now change the view to a camera view.
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Go to render settings.
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Lock the view.
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And, add a Vray Denoiser Element.
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Vray frame buffer.
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And start IPR.
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The environment is too dark.
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Let’s increase the render multiplier of the HDRI map.
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20 should be fine.
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Yes, good now.
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Let’s enlarge the image size a bit.
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Rendering done.
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Open history panel.
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And save the image.
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Okay, now the first thing i wanted to show you was this:
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If you need, you can move the Vray Sun to somewhere far from the current position.
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But you have to keep the direction as the same.
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This way, it does not change your lighting set up.
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I am going to multiply all coordinate values by 10.
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This will keep the direction as the same.
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Now the sun is far away.
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Let’s render again.
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Save image and compare with the previous one.
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As you see there is no difference.
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Like I said in the beginning, the position of the Vray Sun icon is not important.
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It is the direction that matters.
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The second issue is that the position of the lights can be changed also without affecting the illumination.
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They don’t have to be at the origin point.
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It is better that we keep them away from the main elements of our scene for clarity.
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Let’s see the render.
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Render done.
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Let’s compare it with the previous one.
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Again no difference.
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Finally I’ll show you the first camera view to see whether the matching of the two suns is changing or not, while we are moving the lights.
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And this is simply because the HDRI map is located at the extents of the scene which is theoretically at an infinite distance.
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And that’s it for this tutorial.
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Thanks for watching.
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You can leave any comments or questions below.
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And if you like this video, don’t forget to subscribe to my channel.
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It encourages me to prepare more tutorials.
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Bye for now.
