Mental Ray to light models

This is the fastest setup to light your models. No skydome is required. You only need 2 lights: IE Sun and IE Skylight.

You have to turn on FG in Mental Ray.

The IE sun casts the primary light. Ray traced shadows are the shadows to use. They will not be as soft as those cast by area lights.

The point of the skylight is, it is the global light of the sky; it is not even, and it is influenced by the sun.

The skylight should point down ...

If you turn on Exposure Control, you will be able to use the default light settings ...

Just be sure to turn on exterior daylight:

Rendering default multiplier settings of sky and sun lights will look like this:

If you turn off exposure control, you will see a soft shadow appearing that mocks GI.

The following setup has exposure control off:

You can also use a light shader in the Sun to manage your shadows.

This example has no shadow on the sun. The skylight and FG creates a slight shadow effect on the ground plane.

Note -- you can alternatively setup the sun by making a sunlight system.

This will show a June midday.

Position the icon in the middle of the model. Select the light and set up the time and location to get the effect you want. The settings can be animated to simulate time passing with day to night.

Jeff Patton used a light infinite base shader in this next example to control shadows. His mental ray DOF in his camera incidentally did a little to soften the shadows:

He used an IES sun plus a regular skylight instead of IE sky.

Mental ray sampling 1/16 Mitchell:

NO Global Illumination ... only Final Gather: