V-Ray lights are designed specifically to work with V-Ray and optimize its features.
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While you can use Houdini standard lights with V-Ray, V-Ray includes a set of lights designed specifically for rendering with the V-Ray engine.
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Note: Using V-Ray lights and V-Ray materials within the Houdini scene will produce a more accurate lighting solution than using standard Houdini lights and materials.
UI Path: ||obj Network|| > V-Ray
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The following light types can be created with V-Ray for Houdini:
Ambient light permeates a scene and illuminates from all angles equally without providing contrast. For more information, see vrayLightAmbient.
The V-Ray Directional Light can create light sources that cast parallel light rays in a single direction. For more information, see vrayLightDirect.
A dome light (also considered an area light) creates light within a dome or spherical shape to create a traditional global illumination setup. This Light is frequently used to load HDRI environment images. For more information, see vrayLightDome.
Photometric lights are designed to simulate a light source's distribution pattern exactly as they behave in real life by loading and using an IES (Illumination Engineering Society) file. An IES profile contains details about the light's behavior, such as how the light passes through fresnel lenses, its intensity, and its and falloff. For more information, see vrayLightIES
The VRayLightMesh can create light sources that have volume and shape defined by geometry in the scene, without the need to use self illuminated objects and global illumination. For more information, see vrayLightMesh
The VRay Omni Light is a V-Ray specific light that can be used to create physically accurate lights that casts rays in all directions from a single source. For more information, see vrayLightOmni.
The VRayLightRect, also known as the V-Ray Rectangle light or an "area light" is a planar light source with the shape of a rectangle or circular disk. Rectangle lights are useful for simulating man-made light sources in an interior environment, such as lamps. A rectangle light can have any one of two different shapes: plane or disc. For more information, see vrayLightRectangle.
The VRayLightSphere is a VRay Light object in the shape of a sphere, casting light outward in all directions. For more information, see vrayLightSphere
The V-Ray Spot Light is a V-Ray specific light source plugin that can be used to create a physically accurate light that directs a narrow beam of light with falloff. For more information, see vrayLightSpot.
A Sun light is a spherical light source placed at a specific location which simulates the sun in the sky. A Sun light has some unique qualities:
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For more information, see vrayLightSun
V-Ray Lights have several parameters that make use of textures. The example below illustrates how a texture is specified for the Dome Tex parameter of a vrayLightDome. To do this, first create a V-Ray Material node inside a shop network. Inside the V-Ray Material context, create a V-Ray Image Texture | TexBitmap node to specify the texture. Then in the V-Ray Light, specify the Image Texture node in the desired texture parameter (e.g. Dome Tex).