Here is small workflow to set-up Emarukistani sky with Daz Studio 4.10 using Iray.
I really like to use Iray SkyDome Super PAK or Iray Worlds. I like it because that gives nice control over the shadows and light. The Problem is that rendering is much slower than with HDRI sky dome.
Advantage is that I can fix horizon and rotate sky and sun individual. That I like. It is lovely to be able to change sky and keep distant horizon stationary. Need to remember to disable camera headlight. That mixes a lot of thinks.
For my desert scapes I don't use standard desert material from Iray Worlds. Any texture that uses tiles can be used for ground. Tiles setting in 300 – 300 gives usually nice outcome.
Next I will balance light between sun and dome. That have impact to render time. Good to take some time with this to get it good.
I use following values:
Dome: 70 000 Cd/m^2
Sun: 5 000 000 Cd/m^2
Next I will rotate dome to match with wanted direction of the sun. Most of the sky textures have two suns... that is small problem. I rotate sun and set one of the suns to direction with sun. Then sky matches nicely.
To overcome problem with render time and to gain better light I would like to use HDRI skydome.
In this sample I hide IR-Skydome and let Orestes HDRI Skydome to handle main lighting. I will keep the sun because this skydome has bad ability to produce shadows. I like shadows.
Next we will add Terradome 3 surrounding and some plants with Ultra scatter... Plain area in middle is reserved for the scene. better to put grass there when scene is populated.
I was running that with old Mac from 2013 and made it for faster rendering. That is not so heavy.
By the way, where did you find the small reflexive ball that tells you where the sun is? I'm pretty sure I bought a product that included that, but I never could find it. That would be pretty convenient.
Also, do you use Ultrascatter or UltrascatterPro? And do you know if buying the latter is worth it?
Well, I think I'll put ultrascatter on my wish list. Seems that it could be useful, sometimes. And I'll make the ball. I thought many times that it would be useful, but it never occurred to me that I could just make it.
Thanks for your answers.
