Sphere Environment

Environments add realistic reflections and light sources to the scene. Use Sphere Environments in Truelight Material. They deliver precomputed Image-Based Lighting (IBL) for Truelight Material they are assigned to. The lighting of a Truelight Material can be adjusted with the settings of the Sphere Environment. Each Sphere Environment can be assigned as an input node of each Truelight Material in the Material Editor (see General Truelight Material Settings » Common » Environment). The Sphere Environment is a single-sided shader in OpenGL rendering mode.

The Sphere environment gets its representation and lighting behavior from a texture file.

Environment Material

Environment

Loads the HDR image to be used as light source. The HDR image is used as environment, which is reflected on reflective surfaces in OpenGL rendering. In ray traced rendering the 3D space is reflected in the surfaces.

Environment Geometry
Selects the geometrical form for the current environment.
  • Custom: Loads an external geometry file.
  • Dome
  • Sphere
  • Cube
Is Visible

Sets the light source to on by default. Controls the visibility of the environment within the render view. A hidden environment but activated environment furthermore influences all scene contained objects regarding its look and appearance.

Flip Inside Out

Flips the normals of the Environment Sphere.

Shadow Plane Visible

Enables or disables the shadow plane on the ground.

HDR Light Studio

The HDR image of a Sphere Environment can be interactively created using HDR Light Studio by Lightmap LTD. This part of the GUI is visible if a demo or full version of HDR Light Studio detects VRED on startup.

Edit & Load Settings

Opens HDR Light Studio and tries to load a project that is saved for this material. If no project has been previously saved for this material, you start with a blank canvas. The current HDR image is replaced. All changes made on the HDR Light Studio canvas are immediately applied to the HDR image of the connected VRED Sphere Environment.

Save Settings

Internally saves the HDR Light Studio project for the Sphere Environment that you are currently editing.

LightPaint

This feature is available since HDR Light Studio version 4.0. Integration of LightPaint within VRED allows you to directly click the VRED render window to position your light sources in the HDR image. For example, the current light source reflects in that position. Refer to the HDR Light Studio manual for detailed information on the different painting modes. Choosing one of the three painting modes activates the paint tool in the VRED render window. Hold SHIFT and click in the scene to place the light source that is selected in the HDR Light Studio canvas. Hold SHIFT and right-click in the scene to select a light source. The active painting mode is used to determine the light node in the HDR map.

Color Correction

Exposure

Sets the HDR-Image’s exposure level. The higher the exposure level, the longer the series of shutter cycles which are used to calculate the image’s light intensity.

Whitebalance

Sets the whitepoint value in Kelvin.

Hue-Shift

Shifts all colors in the HDR-Image uniformly through the hue color range.

Contrast

Separates the light and dark color values further from each other.

Brightness

Raises the color value of the whole HDR-Image.

Saturation

Sets the HDR-Image’s saturation.

Reflected Saturation

Sets the HDR-Image’s saturation when the HDR-Image reflects in any surface.

Transformation

The source of spherical projection of the Sphere Environment Material can be set with transformation parameters.

Environment Size

Sets the radius of the Sphere Environment Material’s projection sphere. The projection sphere must enclose all objects using a material having this Sphere Environment Material as environment shader assigned. All objects that are outside the projection sphere using a Truelight Material with this Sphere Environment Material as input channel, are not rendered properly.

Center X, Y, Z

Defines the projection sphere’s center position.

Get from Object

Sets the projection sphere’s center. To center the projection pivot automatically, select an object and press Get Center. The selected object center is now used as projection spheres pivot.

Rotate X, Y, Z

Sets the Sphere Environment Material’s orientation.

Scale X, Y, Z

Sets the Sphere Environment Material’s size. With the scale value, the image projection can be stretched and squashed on any axis.

Raytracing Settings

These settings take effect in Raytracing Mode only.

Is Visible in Reflections
Sets the visibility.
Use as Lightsource

Uses the HDR ALS light source. Only supported in FullGI illumination mode.

Emit Caustics

Activates/deactivates Emit Caustics. Allows the HDR to emit caustics. Only supported in FullGI illumination mode with caustics.

Material ID

Sets the id of the material.

Illumination

  • Upper Hemisphere: Emits light only from the top half of the sphere.

  • Full Sphere: Emits light from the whole sphere.

Override IBL Sampling Quality

If enabled, the setting overrides the global IBL Sampling quality for sampling the environment map.

  • Interactive Quality: Sets the IBL sampling quality during interactive rendering.

  • Still Frame Quality: Sets the IBL sampling quality during Still Frame rendering.