Manual Sun

[Garquitectos]

How can get hard shadows with a "fake" sun? I want to get the global ilumination from a HDRI a control the position of the sun with a mesh emitter. With the "daylight" setting I can't get a proper ilumination, so I want to put enviroment ilumination from a HDRI and a emitter mesh... If a put a very large mesh can i get proper shadows?

[face_off]

Have you considered using the Daylight environment, and load your IBL image into the Sky Texture pin? IMO using the Daylight environment will give better shadows than you will get from a mesh emitter.

Paul

[Garquitectos]

Yes... but I can control well the proportion between sun light and HDRI... In C4D+vray I load hdri like enviroment, and then put a parallel light for the sun and I can easilly tweak the contribution of sun light... I saw that Enrico Cerica (a master of octane shoot two render one with the sun light and other with hdri and the mix both in photoshop...
Thanks in advance.

[rappet]

Probably nothing new that I am telling, but anyway...

When using daylight environment you can use the background image for good reflections (i.e. in glass),
you can set the shadow by sun (hard and soft) by tweaking sun size and sky turbidity.
It is pretty hard to get t.he right balance between sun and hdr, but a lot depends on tne quality of the hdr!

Some good HDR images you can render with in texture environment producing the shadows nicely...
If you do not like the same hdr for background I often use Alpha channel and add another sky later.

And ofcourse you can do the Enrico method and mix hdr and daylight afterwards.. just make sure the light directions are the same.

greetings,