[Question]HDR - ENV

[Alang7™]

Hey guys!

I was wondering if there is any way to let the HDR pass through an object. I'm doing a rendering, with a car in a garage. I don't want add much physical lights, so I would like to use an HDR instead.

The garage is closed, so if I plug an ENV on the setting I won't see any light on the inside. If I exclude whole garage with object render control "Visible to Reflection/Refraction" the scene light up, but then the garage does not reflect anymore on the car.

[romullus]

Plug garage walls' and ceiling's material to rayswitcher's reflect, refract and direct slots and assign rayswitcher to afforementioned objects. Leave garage floor's material as it is - you may want some bounce light on your car.

[Alang7™]

Yes, but then the lights doesn't pass through the garage wall

Look at the images. The first one is with RaySwitcher. The second image is without "Visible to Reflection/Refraction", and as I said works great, but it doesn't give reflections to my car.

[romullus]

Well, of course with that setup, everything that is outside garage walls, won't be reflected on your car. If you want reflections from enviroment, then you must leave rayswitcher's reflection slot empty.

[maru]

I think selecting the objects which should not block HDRI lighting (garage walls, ceiling, etc) and unchecking "cast shadows" in object properties should do more or less the same thing, without the need to set up the rayswtiching for each material.

[Alang7™]

I think with Cast Shadow unchecked it's a bit better. But feels like the lights still not going through the walls. I think the only way is to make a reflection render, and add it in post

[Juraj]

In my opinion there is much simpler way to achieve this:

Set up your HDRi dome as actual light source inside the garage with "visible directly and occlude other lights OFF".
Just use it as CoronaLightMtl on inverted half-sphere or some other shape.

This will actually lead to normal physically correct result without the hassle of above setups.