Hi,

Richard and Bruno

If you take the lightprobe into Photoshop (CS2 onwards I believe) or any software that can manipulate HDRIs (http://www.hdrlabs.com), you can make the light probe smaller! say 128 pixels deep by whatever the width works out to be. Then apply that to the illumination channel in Vue.

This has the advantages of working the maths out quicker, you can apply guassian blur to even- out the white balance and correct and enhance some of the element of the probe itself as it won't be seen and the system overheads are lower (see http://www.hdrlabs.com for some excellent tips and free progs for manipulating HDRIs).

Remove the infinite ground plane and replace with a simple plane and size it for the scene with a mat that matches the ground plane of the HDRI. Or you can use your imported models that have a similar look and feel  in combination with the simple plane (my prefered method), or you can use an eco system etc etc. (see my gallery).

Then you need a sphere with the polygons inverted (so the face normals of the polygon face in-wards to the scene) (I can let you have one if you don't have a modelling program, If I remember correctly Poser can invert polys). Apply the HDRI as you would any other texture map to an object in vues material editor.

Adjust the sphere for size (this will depend on the resolution of the original HDRI).

Make sure you turn off anti alias, indirect lighting, cast shadows, receive shadows, in the advanced mat editor for the sphere.

Adjust the lumious control in the effects editor tab to get the brightness/contrast required.

If it's an indoor scene use AO, if it's an out door scene use AO or GR.

That should be everything I think! off the top of my head as such.

Hope this helps.

Chris