Dave Girard demonstrates a technique for mixing a V-Ray Sun and Sky Environment in Maya along with an HDR environment, adding some visual interest by using the best of both those systems.
For a while now, I’ve been mixing V-Ray skies with some HDR environments and was doing it in Nuke because I didn’t realize it was doable in Maya – that is, until Vlado at Chaos Group suggested using a Blend Colors utility
Dave notes that previous to this technique, he had been compositing the effect in NUKE, until realizing that it can be done directly in a Maya render by using a Maya Blend Colors Utility. Dave walks through the process for how to mix V-Ray Sun/Sky with an HDR Environment light image and mentions a caveat in his post here.