I think about it this way … when we go out walking in the streets, the scene around us is very busy. This is especially important in figure based compositions, because the focus of the image is on the main actor(s) in the scene. I add mesh lights to highlight my main figure(s) and make them stand-out from the rest of the scene.

If we are already using a good HDR image, why do we need to add mesh lights? Dimension Theory and Orestes Graphics also has some great HDRi’s for Iray. Here, we are using the Barcelona Rooftops HDRI from sIBL Archives. a lot of light information in our IBL would be lost due to range limits.Ī decent JPG can serve as a good enough background, but it will not be sufficient for providing good realistic scene lighting.īelow is our Princess of the East image, with just the IBL turned on. This is because the difference in range between our very bright sunlight and everything else will be overly compressed. Using a regular JPG image that only supports 255 values per pixel, is not going to work well for scene lighting. I think about it this way … sunlight is a very strong light source, and its value should be many many times greater than anything else in the scene. The higher the range, the better the results. In particular, what range of values it supports. How well our IBL illuminates the scene will depend in large part on the HDR image we are using.

This beginner Iray tutorial has more on how I use a HDR image in Daz Studio Iray. Realistic background that is consistent with both lighting and reflections.

I usually use a HDR image for this to provide my scene with –

Daz studio iray