I have never tried the workflow you use in your thread.

The workflow I have used for years for both mentalray and vray goes like this: Take 360 HDR pictures on set. Stitch them with PTGui in windows to go a full 360 long/lat HDR image. Plug that image into sIBL_edit (www.hdrlabs.com, there are plenty of good free H DRs you can use on that site also). Load the sIBL file in sIBL_GUI and output a vray light scene. From that you get ect result to the plate and try to ot so you get the or example is not a basic HDR setup for Vray, this plate. I don't use the lightdome match the grade of the plate for correct colours from the HDR. So yellow or whatever in the HDR. will usually give an 80% corr output. I usually look at the the HDR image. This helps a l one wall that is a bit blue f

Import that scene into maya and build a basic version of the scene. Try to match all the light sources position and type with the HDR. If you have an outside en viroment it's easy you only need one directional I never use VraySun as it's ver y hard to match the light colour with it. I almost always use vray area lights unless the lightsource is a spot of a spher elight then area light wont work of course. But most of the time they light with area lights on set, so you will get a very close match. I always work in linear color space in maya. I dont use the "linear workflow" bu tton. I just set the gamma to 2.2 in the render settings. I color correct with a gamma node all my colors plugged into a shader and I use the "texture input gam ma" node for all fileins. For render I put the plate as an image plane on the tracked camera. And then it' s a matter of matching your render as close as possible to the plate. You should have a 90-100% match so there will be less work in comp. You always have to cha nge the darks and highlights a bit in comp to get a perfect match. Trick is to n ot have too much overbright or dark areas. If your plate has that kind of lighti ng it's better to render in a more flat manner. So you have a good black to whit e range in your render, so you can tweak this in comp instead. Sometimes I use the wrapper to get the shadows from the object onto the plate wh ile I'm lighting. Just so you can match the shadows as close as possible. As thi s can be quite slow sometimes I usually just use it in the beginning until the s hadows as matched then I turn it off. This can be a bit tricky to setup sometime s. I usually project the plate onto the ground and use -1 in alpha on the wrappe r. Shadows and alpha checked. Rest is default. Sometimes I use the default vray shader and sometimes a surfaceshader depends on the results you get. Surface sha der might give you too much GI light coming from the ground (which you can compe nsate with grading the plate). It's always good to have a reference object on se t that you can match too. Then you know you have the correct amount of GI coming from the ground. We had a stuffed bird on set that we shot as references for th e seagull commercial. For rendering I usually output all the normal passes, bea + gi + light + reflec + refract + spec + diffuse. The shadows are rendered as a separate render layer on a white background with G I on so you get colours in the shadows. Use the wrapper material for this. I also render an occlussion pass for the objects in the plate. For the reflection I turn the HDR reflection to black in render settings so you only get the reflection in the render. Try to match the glossiness as much as po ssible here, but if its very glossy you can save time by doing it with a simple blur in comp. I also render the reflection again in a new render layer but with

a white surfaceShader on the object. This way you get an alpha for the reflectio n for comp. In comp: You multiply the reflection pass with the black background on the plate with 50% . Put a white background behind the reflection pass with the help from the alpha a nd use this to plus/screen on the plate at 50%. This usually gives you a very cl ose match to a real reflection. Usually you can see other reflections in the pla te so you can grade match and tweak the amount of those two layers in the comp t o get a perfect match. The shadows are mutiplied onto the plate, if you are grading this pass remember to check your values so your not going over 1 or 0. A clamp will fix that for yo u. Then it's just a matter of tweaking your render passes and plusing them together to get an as close as possible match to the plate. I wouldn't worry too much about getting a perfect shadow catcher material in vra y as most of the work is done in comp anyways. But you should look closely at th e shadows and match them to the plate.