hey there welcome back to our series on how to use v-ray for SketchUp today we're going to explore the different ways to make lights in v-ray before we start make sure to download the project files from the video description so you can follow along let's get started and see what kind of Lights we can make first we have these rectangle lights that can help us simulate soft boxes we also have spherical light spotlights IES lights for simulating interesting light profiles and the mesh light the dome light is great for creating image-based lighting you can also use the v-ray Sun and Sky system for natural lighting and this is usually turned on by default let's examine each of these lights one by one after that we'll see how v-ray can generate different lighting scenarios and how we can use them in a project we'll start with the rectangle light you can create this by clicking holding and dragging in the viewport try placing it above a chair once we start the interactive render you'll see that it lights up the scene now let's look at the properties you can change the color of the light by picking one from the menu or by setting the light's Kelvin temperature just like in the real world you can also adjust the intensity of the light the light can be a rectangle or a disc shape and you can change the size the size of a rectangle is defined by its length and width and the size of a disk is defined by its radius you can also change the directionality of the light with a value of zero the light spreads out evenly but with a value of 1 it will focus the light rays sometimes you might not want to see the light source in your scene if that's the case you can open the options and make it invisible next let's look at the spherical light many of the settings are the same as the rectangle light like color intensity and size as we go through each light you'll notice that a lot of them share these same properties the spotlight is another neat type of light and it's great for interior scenes again some settings are the same but with this light you can change the cone angle to adjust the light's Focus and adjust the penumbra angle to make the light softer or Sharper next is the IES light which is a bit different this light uses a profile to create interesting lighting effects major manufacturers often provide IES profiles for their lights that you can download for free the intensity of the IES light is preset but you can adjust it if needed the Omni light is another useful light that gives your scene an overall light source it emits light in all directions from a single point and can be used to simulate point source lights with the shadow radius you can control its size which affects the softness or sharpness of the light the Omni light is similar to spherical with the main difference that omnilite doesn't have a shape if you need custom shaped lights you can use the mesh light this light can be applied to any object in your scene and once it's applied you can change its color and intensity like you would with any other light the dome light is a bit different than the others it's usually used with a 360 degree texture from The Real World calculated based on the texture as we can see the light comes with an image from the real world and the mapping type is set to environment spherical let's start an IPR and see why that is important there are some clouds in the image and the light is soft you can rotate the image to change the position of the light source and clouds you can also get custom hdri textures from the chaos Cosmos library in the hdri category we can choose one download it and import it into the scene we can see it goes into the texture tab let's check its mapping type make it spherical select the dome light and drag the texture into the texture slot as an instance now the dome light will use that hdri to simulate the environment lighting the best part is that you can rotate these textures to find the perfect lighting angle for your scene now let's take a look at the simplest way to create natural lighting the Sun and Sky system is the default in SketchUp and is used as a source for the position of the sun based on the real world location of your SketchUp model as well as the date and time specified in the SketchUp Shadows panel however you may want to place the sun in a specific spot for artistic reasons if that's the case you can turn on the custom Sun position and place the sun anywhere in your scene by changing the vertical and horizontal angle [Music] similar to other lights you can change the color and intensity of the Sun the size multiplier controls how soft or sharp the sun's Shadows are larger values make the shadow softer while smaller values make them sharper [Music] you'll also see a clouds option here when this is turned on v-ray generates procedural clouds in your scene which you can control with settings like density higher values make denser clouds while lower values make fewer clouds so we've covered all the types of Lights in v-ray the great part is that v-ray can help us pick the best lighting for our project by generating different lighting scenarios to see these open the light gen tool the first time you open it v-ray will download some assets it needs to generate different hdri light scenarios you can then select whether your space is interior or exterior and choose your light source sun and sky or hdri you can also specify how many variations v-ray will calculate based on the vertical and horizontal position of the sky click generate and let v-ray do its thing v-ray will generate various light scenarios each represented by a thumbnail click on the one you like and v-ray will automatically apply the sun's position exposure and white balance settings you can save this light setup to use later which saves you from having to set it all up again now let's take a look at the HDR you can also import and use your own custom hdri library or use v-rays to do this you need to specify the number of hdris and variations to generate stop the interactive render and click generate this time try to use pre-configured and saved light scenarios click on the load button and choose the light setup file applying these lighting scenarios to your scene is as simple as choosing the one you like now let's have a look at an exterior scene with a combination of an hdri light for the environment and different artificial lights to make an interesting light profile on the wall inside the house IES lights are added the intensity is increased to make them more prominent to create the illusion that the light from the house is scattered on the grass some artistic lights are added in front of the house to achieve this effect the invisible option is enabled so we can't see the light source a rectangle light is then placed as a disc in the ceiling lamp inside the house to provide overall lighting finally more artistic lights are added to light up the trees around the house these are rectangle lights with small directionality all of the artificial lights are given warmer Kelvin colors to mimic real-world light temperatures and there you have it you now know how to use v-ray lights take advantage of v-ray's automated lighting options and combine different lights in your scene thanks for watching [Music]