HDRI lighting and smoke?

Is it possible to light smoke with an HDRI lighting setup? How?

Also it is possible to effect smoke with turbulence without particles? How?

Thanks!!

Douglas E Knapp

Make sure MIS for the world is turned on.

HDRI: Yes. You light it like any other HDRI setup. Plenty of tutorials online.

TURBULENCE: Yes. You add the same Turbulence Force like you’d use with particles.

No but turning it on did not help. If I add a point light my smoke is red (the color it should be) and without it, it is gray/black.

It is easy to try just turn the cycles render to cpu and add a quick smoke and turn it to red color. Add a hrdi light source and see it not working.

Any other ideas?

I have tried that. It does not work.

Red smoke. Only light source is an HDRI with MIS on:


Here is the same scene with MIS off:


Come again? Also make sure you haven’t set volume bounces to 0.

So then why can’t you see the hdri background?

Ah, I see there are two MSI and you are talking about the volume one!

What does that have to do with your issue?
You can’t see it because I have set Render > Film to “Transparent”. This has no influence on the lighting.


And no, I’m talking about this MIS setting (the one for the world = the HDRI):