LUME skydome

This setup uses only ONE LIGHT [a direct light] and a Lume skydome [which replaces the use of a skylight.]

This is a good setup for a daylight shot for a clear day with sharp ray-trace shadows. The direct light is good to emulate the direct rays of the sun.

The lume glow material on the skydome can illuminate the scene itself, but it will not cast a shadow by itself.

Turn on Mental Ray in the Common tab of the Render dialogue

Make a skydome with inverted normals on a large sphere encompassing the scene.
Either convert to editable poly and flip normals at element level, or, apply a normal modifier.

The skydome material ...
Self illumination is not required as that will be handled with the lume glow.

The color on the material is handled entirely by the glow material, in this case, our blue gradient.

Our light is a single DIRECT LIGHT
[exclude the skydome sphere] ...
Keep playing with the multiplier of the light [and the glow amount setting on the lume skydome] until you get a balanced color on your gray or lit gray model ... neither too blue, or too orange.

The color of the light as well as the gradient in the skydome material are also both factors in the final color balance. The result you want is some sort of natural color, not a orange or blue scene. See Jeff Patton's sample above.

Shadow density on the light ...

The light can be outside the dome.
Turn on ray traced shadows. These will not have a soft edge.

The camera will be close inside the dome. You might have to adjust the camera clipping plane and FOV.

Final Gather, no GI, Indirect Illumination tab

Renderer tab:





Render from a camera just inside the skydome.

To balance out your lighting, tweak these factors:
> The brightness setting of the lume glow material

>The colors of the gradient for the lume glow

>The multiplier on the direct light

>The color on the direct light