V-Ray Environment Settings

Note: There are no lights in this scene...as in zero. The only thing lighting the scene is the environment light shown on the left.


- GI Environment Skylight override is enabled.
- Reflection/refraction override is enabled.

Note: I used a HDRI map for the reflections in the scene but the the HDRI map does not contribute to the lighting. I could easily use the HDRI in the reflection slot to light the scene by dragging "Map 15" into the "None" slot of the GI environment. For this particular scene, basic GI environment lighting worked well so I chose not use a HDRI map in the GI environment slot.

The Ground Plane

In order for the shadows, reflections and GI bounces to render over the background image we need an object in the scene to catch all of that data. For this we will use a matte object.

Note: To match the perspective of the background image I simply rotated the camera by hand until a suitable match was achieved.

Matte Object Settings

Note: to access the V-Ray properties dialog box select an object in the scene and right-click in the viewport. Select V-Ray properties from the quad menu.

- Matte object is enabled and shadows are checked.. This will make the selected objects invisible at rendertime but things like shadows, reflections and GI bounces will still show up.
- Notice you have control over many options like reflection and GI amounts. This is a very useful dialog box because you can control how V-Ray treats scene geometry on a per-object basis.