Lighting an Exterior Daylight Scene - Photographic Rendering with V-Ray for SketchUp - page 127

The lighting process
With all of those important considerations taken under advisement then, it is time to
move forward and start defining the lighting tools that we could potentially make use
of on this project.
The obvious initial choice would perhaps be to once again make use of the daylight
system in the form of the V-Ray Sun and Sky (TexSky map), using them of course in
conjunction with SketchUp's own shadow setting controls.
Note
While this is an obvious first option to explore, you have hopefully by now come to
realize that when lighting in V-Ray, we have the ability to use any kind of lighting
rig that we want, mixing, matching, and configuring lighting elements to suit the
needs of our current project.
Having said that, the ease of use, power, and quality of the daylight system in V-Ray
certainly makes it a serious contender as our lighting tool of choice when working on
an exterior setup such as this. So let's go ahead then and explore its controls a little
more deeply than we perhaps have up to this point.
Setting a starting exposure level
To get things started in our DayTime_Exterior_01.skp scene, we will of course
need to once again dial in some initial exposure settings that will hopefully put us in
the ball park for our final renders. In this particular instance, I am going to make use of
the sunny 16 rule as a starting point and then from there tweak the exposure settings
a little so as to set a solid exposure start point for the scene.
Note
The sunny 16 rule can basically be described as follows. On a bright sunny day,
in order to get a decent exposure, one that will give us a good overall level of illu-