This page provides information on the VRayLightDome node.
Overview
The VRayLightDome is a V-Ray light object that can be used for image based lighting. The light is coming from a hemispherical dome above the y-axis of the light.
UI Path: ||Toolbar|| > V-Ray menu icon >Lights > VRayLightDome
Inputs
The VRayLightDome node has two input nodes.
tex – Use this input to feed the environment texture that is going to be used to illuminate the scene.
axis – Used to apply transformations to the Dome Light.
Basic Parameters
Color – Controls the color of the light. When using photometric units, this color is normalized so that only the color hue is used, whereas the light intensity is determined by the Intensity Multiplier.
Intensity – Multiplier for the light color.
Dome Spherical – When enabled, this option causes the dome light to cover the entire sphere around the scene. When off (the default), the light covers a hemisphere only.
Use Ray Distance – When enabled, the distance at which shadow rays are traced will be limited to the value of Ray Distance parameter.
Dome Ray Distance – Specifies the maximum distance to which shadow rays are going to be traced.
Texture
Mapping Type – Controls the mapping type used by the dome light. The available options are:
angular
cubic
spherical
mirror ball
screen
Horizontal Flip – When enabled, flips the texture horizontally (active when Control by Position is disabled).
Vertical Flip – When enabled, flips the texture vertically (active when Control by Position is disabled).
Horizontal Rotation – Controls the horizontal rotation (active when Control by Position is disabled).
Vertical Rotation – Controls the vertical rotation (active when Control by Position is disabled).
Tex Resolution – Specifies the resolution at which the texture is resampled for importance sampling.
Tex Adaptive – When enabled, V-Ray will adjust the number of samples taken for different parts of the texture depending on their brightness.
Control by Position – When enabled, the rotation of the texture in the dome light is affected by the rotation of the dome light locator in the scene. This makes it easier to control the texture rotation by rotating the dome light locator in the scene.
Sampling
Light cut-off Threshold – Specifies a threshold for the light intensity, below which the light will not be computed. This is useful in scenes with many lights, where you want to limit the effect of the lights to some distance around them. Larger values cut away more from the light; lower values make the light range larger. If you specify 0.0 , the light will be calculated for all surfaces.
Shadows
Shadows – Enables or disables the tracing of shadows.
Show Bias – Moves the shadow toward or away from the shadow-casting object (or objects). If the value is too low, shadows can "leak" through places they shouldn't, produce moire patterns or create out-of-place dark areas on meshes. If this value is too high, shadows can detach from an object. If the value is too extreme in either direction, shadows might not be rendered at all.
Shadow Color – A multiplier for the shadows color.
Options
Invisible – Controls whether the shape of the VRayLight source is visible in the render result. When this option is turned off the source is rendered in the current light color. Otherwise it is not visible in the scene. Note that this option only affects the visibility of the light when seen directly by the camera or through refractions. The visibility of the light with respect to reflections is controlled by the Affect specular and Affect Reflections options.
Affect Diffuse – Determines whether the light is affecting the diffuse properties of the materials.
Affect Specular – Determines whether the light is affecting the specular of the materials. This means glossy reflections.
Affect Reflections – Determines whether the light will appear in reflections of materials. This means both perfect and glossy reflections.
Diffuse contribution – A multiplier for the effect of the light on the diffuse.
Specular contribution – A multiplier for the effect of the light on the specular.
Photon Emission
Dome Target Radius – Defines a sphere around the light icon where photons are being shot when photon-mapped caustics or the global photon map are used.
Dome Emit Radius – Defines a sphere around the light icon from which photons are being shot towards the target radius area.
Caustics Subdivs – Value used by V-Ray when calculating Caustics. Lower values mean more noisy results, but will render faster. Higher values produce smoother results but take more time.
Caustics multiplier – A multiplier for the generated caustics by the selected object. Note that this multiplier is cumulative - it does not override the multiplier in the Caustics render roll-out section. For more information, please see the IBL and Caustic example below.
UI
Locator scale – Allows the user to control the size of the dome light locator in the scene.
Example: IBL and Caustics
Caustics Off
Caustics On
Other caustics examples:
