Thanks for the advice lads.. all taken onboard
Ironically, I removed the 'light affects shadow colour' option for some silly reason (although it still wouldn't have looked spot on).
I think I've somewhat confused myself a bit too with some settings as the background is mapped to a Vray light material with a 1.1 intensity. None of the light objects affect the background at all for obvious reasons (using exclude / include lists) but it was too dark so I had to make it self-illuminated slightly.. but as such, have actually increased the intensity a fair bit of the displayed sun area thus I think I've mixed some things up a bit trying to match a sunset too much for what's actually being displayed now.
I tried to up the global ambience a bit but it didn't seem to make much / any difference.. I was hoping to at least get _some_ definition on the wheels if nothing else but will try other methods with HDRI etc.
This is my first real attempt at outdoor lighting with Vray.. I struggled with Vray and brazil when I used it to create anything but an indoor studio type light effect, regardless of actual lights used.. and in contrast, can't seem to create indoor lighting for the life of me with finalRender, but outdoor seemed to work better with that (
old attempt at external lighting with finalRender).
I'll test out some of the things mentioned here and see what I can come up with. I've got a whole DVD full of HDRI probes (800 or so) so there must be _one_ in there that'd give an effect I want.. just a bitch to find that one
Thanks again for the suggestions.. I want to get this right as I have a few other ideas of a similar nature for future renders
Regards,
Ian