Render finitely distant illumination and reflection
 
 
 

To render finitely distant illumination and reflection

  1. Place your scene into a large sphere.

    This sphere will be used as the light source. (It is geometry that gets tessellated.)

  2. Assign a Lambert material to the sphere and set the following attributes:
  3. Map the Incandescence to the HDR image you want to use.
  4. Render with Final Gather (see Render with final gather), with the Primary Diffuse Scale set to between 50 and 100.
  5. Make sure Global illumination is turned on.
  6. Tweak the Diffuse attribute of your object's shaders, if necessary.