The thunderclap heard around the world (or how to stop worrying and love IRay)

docbother

Iray rendering. This happens to me sometimes. You see, I couldn't get the meshugana spotlight to fill in any light. Turned up the lumens, And up, And up some more - by orders of magnatude.

Yes the light was on. Like a bleedin' supernova at about 60 billion lumens. Ten centimenters from the target. Dark as a dungeon. You think I might be missing something obvious? 

"Why does the universe hate me?", I asked while reveling in self-pity. Then for some reason I glanced over at the render settings "enviroment" parms.

That's when the thunderclap happend . It was my palm slapping against my forehead.

Three words:"Sun-Sky Only". (Does the hyphen make it two words? Nevermind. I digress)

Other than still lacking adult supervision, I corrected the situaton by changing it to "Dome and Scene" ( or Scene only )

Victoria 8 and most of the set were immediately vaporized by my spotlight -- a complete white-out. Yeah, I probably should back off the lumens a bit.

But I got this. Thanks for letting me share.

TheKD

Haha been there before.

fixmypcmike

This happens to me every time I try to use Iray.

Well, except for finding the solution.

alan bard newcomer

I suppose we could trigger a natural diaster by all banging our heads on the table simultanously in honor of obsure things to adjust in daz. 

 

marble

I spent an hour last week trying to figure that one before I realised that I was using a render preset which was configured for sun-sky.

alan bard newcomer

would be nice if the hdr listing at least showed up in the scene menu. 
and if the main light direction from the hdr showed up with the little arrows like it used to 
 

Paintbox

Haha , very recognisable! 

Well at least you won't have to bother us with the question how to create a supernova lightbeam ;)

Richard Haseltine

alan bard newcomer said:

would be nice if the hdr listing at least showed up in the scene menu. 
and if the main light direction from the hdr showed up with the little arrows like it used to 
 

HDRIs have never done that, in Irasy - I think 3delight's uberEnvironment did load with something similar, though it's been a while since I used it.

For Sun and Sky you can use a distant light, or the Sundial, as a sun node (via render Settings) and that will let you see and set the direction.

areg5

TheKD said:

Haha been there before.

We all have!

lvls3dx

alan bard newcomer said:

would be nice if the hdr listing at least showed up in the scene menu. 
and if the main light direction from the hdr showed up with the little arrows like it used to 
 

I don't know if I get you exactly, but my personal way to deal with that is always adjusting dome rotation parameter based on the y axis camera rotation. 

Sadly this is not a out of the box/one click solution. First you have to know well the way the specific HDRI you are using works (what would be dome rotation angle for the light to point at the front of your figure and such); and from there work on.

areg5

areg5 said:

 

 

DustRider

alan bard newcomer said:

would be nice if the hdr listing at least showed up in the scene menu. 
and if the main light direction from the hdr showed up with the little arrows like it used to 
 

As others have noted, I don't think this was ever available (been using Iray since the first DS beta with it). The easiest way for me to determine where the light is coming for in an HDRI is to add a sphere primitive to the scene, and put a chrome shader on it (or similarly reflective shader).

Gordig

These might be useful for finding the direction of lighting. I don’t use them very often, but I probably should. 

mindsong

I've done this - never found a deterministic way to repeat or handle it, but I'd have to add 10 zeros to a lumen setting to get a usable render, then later, phhhooomp - vapourized iray scene... :)

heh,

--ms