How do I light a space scene?

Support Lighting and Rendering
1

I’m using Cycles for a space scene.

Using an HDRI gives good lighting but I get the reflections of the HDRI onto my objects which does not look correct for a space scene. (for instance, a nice sandy beach reflection on a Star Ship in space). I also tried using an object with an Emitter material as the sun. That looked OK but not as good as the lighting from the HDRI.

What would be ideal is an HDRI image with only the sun and no other objects or scenery. I have not been able to find such an HDRI.

What do other people do to light space scenes? Any suggestions would welcome.

Thanks.

Edit: Is there a way to turn off the HDRI reflections onto my object but still allow the HDRI to light the object?

2

I create my own HDRIs. First I create a Sun and a star field, then I render as an HDRI and import it back using this method:

If you have enough money, you can consider having the latest version of Pro Lighting: Skies, which has HDRIs especially made for space scenes.

3

HDR Labs has a Milky Way hdr that might work for you:-

http://www.hdrlabs.com/sibl/archive.html

4

Thanks Akikun. That tutorial looks interesting. I’m going to try and make my own HDRI.

Thanks organic, I saw this a few day ago and didn’t think it would work. But after looking at it again, there is an HDRI in there that only has the light source with no background. I’ve been doing some testing and this may work for me.

5

Use light path node to discriminate reflection rays from others.