Has anyone had any issues, or know of any work-arounds when you are doing interior images, and you have a lot of large windows, like in the reception of a large office block. I am doing several scenes with a HDRI outside (on adaptive dome), and IES on the inside, with other light sources such as TV's and vray light materials.
It is a nightmare getting the lighting right.
I know that using progressive rendering with an override material, and excluding the windows from the overide material, helps a lot, but I find it all frustating.
No. I also try to not use plane lights. I just tweak the exposure vs. light multipliers endlessly until I think they are balancing out nicely. A lot of this depends on your HDRI file too, and what settings it is at. Some of them are very contrasty with point of very bright light. Others are diffused by clouds and cast a much softer light.
Hi Adam, Thanks for your reply. Putting plane lights in the window was my old method, but because I use ambient occlusion in my render passes, it use to cast a shadow onto the glass in the ambient occlusion pass, which I had to erase in post processing, so I was hoping to avoid it.
Do you find that in most cases, if you use an external HDRI on its own, that the light it casts through the window and floor is often too sharp, and overexposed.
It is frustrating. Have you tried putting artificial plane lights in the windows, or skylight portals? Another thing to keep in mind is that in general, the outside needs to be way brighter than we might think, even overexposed. This will light up the interior a lot more, but will probably blow out anything outside. This is a common problem for Photographers as well. Getting the exposure just right is key, but difficult. Sometimes we just need to bring the lights inside the room way up so that they are more balanced with the extremely bright sun outside, but if we take this too far it will definitely look faked.