Environment Light

Light  -  Ambient illumination based on an environment map

This light is based on an environment map and act as if the whole environment (located at infinite distance) was illuminating the scene.

This light has been specifically conceived to work with the PBR Surface and Substance PBR Surface renderers, but simpler behavior is also implemented for the legacy Surface renderer.

By default, this light displays the environment map in the background, similarly to what Skybox does. This can be disabled thanks to the Render Skybox option.

In order to benfit from High-dynamic-range lighting (HDR), you need to have the compo Pixel Type in an HDR format (either 16 or 32 bits) and to use an environment map encoded using the .hdr format. Such environment map files easily be found on the web under the name HDRI .

You can adjust the intensity of the whole environment with the Exposure parameter.

The Environment Light is based on an internal pre-processed content map. This pre-calculation is very expensive, but allow a real time rendering after it.Animating the content inside it is not recommended, if so the pre-processing will need to be done for each frame and you will encounter a big performance issue. For animated background content you can use a Skybox

    Oil.createObject("EnvironmentLight")