HRDI Lightning Mental Ray in 3ds Max

[stfaen]

Hi there,

Can anyone help in some HRDI lighting explanations please?

I was trying the usual setting the HDRI image in the environment slot (16 bit, 48bpp), dragging it to the material editor as an instance and setting it to Spherical environment and it seems to works fine with the mr sun with final gather active but while looking around I only see tutorials using exclusively 'skylight'. Is it a rule to use it skylight to have better lighting compared to mr sun? And what would be a better way to use it if I am doing it wrong?

And also if anyone can guide me with more in depth hdri lighting on mental ray, I would be much grateful. Btw I'll also try it in vray at some point but it is just I wanted to use it with the renderer I feel more at ease right now, so vray tutorials are also welcome

Thanks a lot

[Holzi0486]

Hi there,

Can anyone help in some HRDI lighting explanations please?

I was trying the usual setting the HDRI image in the environment slot (16 bit, 48bpp), dragging it to the material editor as an instance and setting it to Spherical environment and it seems to works fine with the mr sun with final gather active but while looking around I only see tutorials using exclusively 'skylight'. Is it a rule to use it skylight to have better lighting compared to mr sun? And what would be a better way to use it if I am doing it wrong?

And also if anyone can guide me with more in depth hdri lighting on mental ray, I would be much grateful. Btw I'll also try it in vray at some point but it is just I wanted to use it with the renderer I feel more at ease right now, so vray tutorials are also welcome

Thanks a lot

HDR Image Based Lighting 3D Scene Setup - Ronen Bekerman 3d architectural visualization blog
Since the general Global-Illumination principle is the same in mr and vray, it doesn't really matter. Just watch that (make sure to watch how he tweaks the hdri) and you should be fine