The cyclorama should be self lit. Didn't they do that? Sigh.

OK here's the deal.

An "environment" whether it's a cylinder or a sphere captures the lighting and appearance of the world, sans whatever you are going to jam into the middle of that world.

Whatever light you introduce does not define the luminance of the world. The world already has whatever luminance it's supposed to have. Making "the world" be lit, reacting to your scene lights, when it is a cylinder pretending to be the world, will cause the world to appear to be a cylinder with a painting of the world on it, lit by scene lights in an indoor studio. This is a very bad idea. I mean, they got away with it in movies in the 1940s but have you looked at one of those lately? They scream FAKE.

So - your world object - sphere, cyclorama, whatever - should have its image be self lit. Adding lights to light it up, shadows falling on it - nothing like this should be performed, or we will see it for what it really is - a prop, not a world.

The simplest way to set the material up is this.

Starting from a new material:

Diffuse_Value = 0

Specular_Value = 0

Alternate_Diffuse  = white

Add an Image_Map, connected to Alternate_Diffuse

Place your "world" picture on the Image_Map.

That's it.

Turn on IDL and the colors in the "world" will be used to light your central 3D scene.

Then add your sun, as I directed above.

That is all. One light, one "world" prop, self lit.

That Cyclorama looks small to me, as well. It should be huge.

My free environment sphere has a diameter of 1500 feet, and even that is small, but larger than that requires people to adjust camera "Yon" away from default values.

---

Renderosity forum reply notifications are wonky. If I read a follow-up in a thread, but I don't myself reply, then notifications no longer happen AT ALL on that thread. So if I seem to be ignoring a question, that's why. (Updated September 23, 2019)