I’m currently working on a small project that requires the scene too mimic mid afternoon around 2PM near a large open farming area. There isn’t supposed to be many clouds in the sky so this made choosing a good HDRI map difficult. So far its proven really troublesome trying to maintain good gradients.
What kind of Lighting set up should I use in this situation so the scene won’t look too flat?
I’m using 3dsmax 2011 with V-Ray 2.0
Use Physical sun/sky.
(sits back and waits for LowJack)
No, in seriousness, are you sure you can’t find a good HDRI somewhere? What about the ones here: http://www.hdrlabs.com/sibl/archive.html ? is there nothing there that’s close enough to the type of light you’re after?
Choosing an HDRI is really only the first step in lighting your scene though, as I’m sure you realise. How you get to the result you’re after is the tricky part. Folks on here can (and will) offer you advice, but each of us only has our own picture of what you’re trying to achieve and it probably doesn’t look anything like your own. As such, our advice can only ever be of limited use.
What’s most important is to have a clear idea in your mind what you want the scene to look like. The best way to do this is to find a photograph you like and set that as your target. I’d advise trawling sites like flickr.com and pbase.com and find something to aim for. Once you have that, the rest is just a question of technique.
I normally find that once I have a clear idea of what I’m aiming for, the rest just falls into place. If you find the image you want and are still struggling to make your own work match it, then everyone on here can help you get there.
Without pictures we’re all just fumbling in the dark 
Thanks for the quick reply!
Here’s what I’m trying to go for. http://i162.photobucket.com/albums/t264/3dsmatt/PhotoText_Reference_004.jpg
I tried using the VRay sun and sky but I kept getting very flat gradients, it sort of gave it a very CG looking feel. My main question is how to make it look more hyper real in a sense so it doesn’t look flat. The scene consists of a few buildings such as a barn, silos, and a large billboard alongside a road intersection with traffic lights. There’s lots of green grass and wheat placed in the scene too. I know that that time of day the lighting tends to look very flat, but Ive seen a few projects that look incredible that had the same time scenario.
-matt
When you say “it’s flat”, do you mean the sky itself or the resulting lighting? Can you post a picture of what you’re getting? That would help a lot. The thing that immediately stands out to me in the image you’ve linked to is the strong shadows. If you image is washed out compared to that, your sky may be too bright relative to the sun.
I’ve certainly seen a sun/sky system do a sky like the one you show (minus the clouds of course). One thing that’s also apparent in the image you’ve posted is strong vignetting from the camera lens, which is something you could add to your image in post (but save that for right at the end).
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