Animation Lighting with Iray?

Deke

I'm curious how folks are lighting for animation in Iray. A video by Sickleyield has a workflow of selecting everything in the scene and then assigning it the Iray Uber Base shader as a way to start.

What exactly does this shader do? And is ti the best way to start outfighting for Iray?

The next step is clearly creating and positioning lights and I'm interested in learning best practices there as compared to the 3Delight process.

NoName99

For animation I've been lighting with just an HDRI, this is a recent video I posted a short 15 second animation:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZbYTXKkleg

For stills I've been using an HDRI, along with a key, fill, back, and several rim lights, but even with a 970 that renders to slow for animation.
In Iray, Rendering with an HDRI seems to be faster than rendering with lights.

The Iray Uber shader auto-converts 3delight materials and surfaces to iray materials and surfaces. It's better if you learn to use irays materials and shaders first hand, but the auto-conversion does actually work fairly well.

Deke

Thanks. I'll have to master the notion of an HDRI. From what I gather this is a sort of Dome that emits light and isn't visible in the render.