BLENDER | DOME/WORLD LIGHT

So it seems that in Blender the dome equivalent(the name of the world light in Renderman/and VRay) is called a world light. However it is not classified as light per-say in Blender, as it is not “creatable" in the viewport. Rather it is found in the properties editor in the “World” tab. And so to create an image based lighting setup in Blender you can attach an environment texture/HDRI to the colour input of the background. I’m still messing with it, but unfortunately it doesn’t seem like you can’t create multiple versions of these lights within one file, as you can with other renders. This can helpful when testing light setups to separate different light kits into separate groups/collections for example or onto seperate render layers. It can also help to use separate domes/env lights as booster lights to subtly kick up the overall brightness of different assets in a scene - This is very efficient as it is easily scriptable because you don’t have to establish a precise position for the light as you do with area lights for example. All you have to do is simply create it at a specific value and link it. If I find a work around for this I will make sure to update this post with the solution.

Originally posted: September 5, 2019