Light design is an integral part of interior design. It gives me a lot of control over the way the sunlight will look and, on V-Ray 6, you can even have procedural clouds! There’s pretty much nothing you can’t do with it and the results are amazing. Lately, I’ve been using the V-Ray Sun/Sky duo a lot. To mimic this overcast lighting, you have two options: add a V-Ray Sun and a V-Ray Light Dome using VRaySky or a V-Ray Light Dome using a HDRI (you can find a great collection of HDRI’s on Chaos Cosmos). If you open the window on overcast day, there’s no visible sun, but light does come through the window, right? And that happens because sunlight is scattered all around the atmosphere even if you can’t see the sun directly (it’s there, believe me). I know it sounds a bit counter-intuitive, but bear with me. Here’s the first golden tip: sunlight is not enough to light a room. What time is it? Does the sunlight come through an open window? If so, does it light the whole room?

To keep things real, let’s start with light sources you know must be in the scene.

Or for an interior scene, maybe a night shot is just what you need for your client to fall in love with your design. For example, an office building can look OK during the day, but stunning during sunset. The key here is to plan how you want your design to look. After all, different subjects require different lighting. So, what’s the first step towards photorealistic rendering?Įven the most complex, detailed 3D model needs lighting to be seen, and there are literally thousands of different ways you can light your scene. I mean, those are gorgeous photorealistic pictures that showcase what V-Ray can do, and sometimes it’s easy to forget exactly what it takes for you and your 3D rendering software to get there. If you’ve been following our series of blog articles showing how to choose the best renderer, using rendering as a productivity enhancer, and how V-Ray makes it easy for anyone to render incredible images and animations, you probably noticed the beautiful images that illustrate those articles.

Rhino vray exterio render settings