How do I use an HDRI ??
carrie58
Posts: 4,012
in The Commons
I have Dimension Therory's Yosemite pack and love them ,just came across some free HDRI's which I thought could be used similarly but I can't figure it out ........anybody can give me a clue or point me somewhere to learn? Thank you very much
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HDRIs bought from the store usually have DUFs that let you load them.
But in general, you go to: Render Settings -> Environment -> Environment Map and load it there. Make sure Draw Dome is turned on.
That set I purchased too and couldn't figure out how to use it. But after I bought it I checked out the Read Me and the thing is 4 years old. So I'm guessing it doesn't work the way Iray HDRIs work.
It doesn't show up in Iray but it renders fine in 3Dlight.
This is only the second time I've rendered in 3Dlight - It's..interesting. lol So weird watching the image show up in blocks and the character looking quite different than in Iray.
Yeah, you have to plug the environment maps in manually if you want to use this in Iray.
Well I'm still using 3DL soooo I've been trying to figure out where to put the hdr's and the jpgs but I may have it ,found a video by Jabba 01 and gonna follow his instructions
You can drop the images into the Iray HDRI environment slot but it doesn't transfer the lighting data (I tried it). They don't light the figures in the scene the way HDRIs do.
Are they not real HDRIs?
To use the Yosemite images with Iray, they will have to be added manually (use the .tiff file, not the .jpg), and optionally adjust some settings. If you've opened the 3DL version, and want to render in Iray, delete (or hide) everything from Yosemite, select the Iray render engine, and click on the environment map button. The images from the 3DL version should be in the drop-down selection list. Select the .tiff file. Ensure Draw Dome & Draw Ground (for shadows) are on.
I don't know? I don't guess so? They don't appear to have any lighting data (I used the TIFFs not JPGs):
Here's an HDRI from HDRIHaven:
Hm-m, looks like the lighting is in a separate file. There's a DT-Yosemite-HDRx.tif for the dome texture and a DT-Yosemite-ENVx.tif that is used by Uberenvironment for light. Guess it was split to use with 3DLight.
In the deep end and sinking fast....
I have no idea of how HDRIs work, but if there are two files, assuming they are the same image, can you combine them in Photoshop? And speaking of that is there a way to create your own HDRIs in Photoshop with your own photos? (And I mean hi res IPhone 7 plus photos, not a pro camera...)
Depends how they're set up. A lot of sets with separate lighting and background images have really low-res lighting. Could try stacking the lighting HDR over the background image with Lighten mode, but it might add all kinds of blurriness.
Yes.
Make sure your iphone is set to take photos all at the same exposure (this prevents weird blotches of dark or light in places from the phone auto adjusting).
Stand where you want the HDR center to be, and take a series of pictures that covers the whole horizon around you, turning in the same spot.
Repeat this for above and below the horizon (or just above if you want to use your own main scene and don't need the ground).
You can stitch these together in Photoshop using Photomerge, but I don't like it, I use PTGui.
If you want a real HDR image and not just a background sphere, you then have to repeat this using multiple exposures. Ideally you want a range of exposures that goes from dark enough you can see the sun disk clearly and most of the image is completely black, to light enough that you can see detail in the darkest shadows and most of the image is completely white. If you take multiple exposures you can stitch them all at the same time into a true HDR with PTGui.
If you don't want to take a wholllllllle bunch of exposures, I would recommend this way of cheating:
Just take two exposures, one that exposes the main scene nicely, and one that exposes the sky and clouds nicely. If you can get them both to look nice in one exposure, it's all good. Just make sure you wind up with a nice image that has detail everywhere.
Then stitch them into a 360 panorama, convert to 32-bit in Photoshop, and with a hard brush add a super bright white disk where the sun is. The main thing that makes 8-bit images trash at lighting is the lack of a truly bright sun, so you can fake it like this.
No, they aren't the same image. The dome image is a high resolution photo, the lighting is very blurred. It doesn't even look like a picture, more like fog with lighter and darker zones. There's probably a technical term for that, but, like I said, sinking fast...
Yes this would be difficult to use with Iray because unlike a lot of renderers Iray does not allow the use of separate domes for lighting and background.
What I would recommend you do:
Light the scene with the Lighting photo, and render a PNG, do not draw dome.
Replace the Lighting photo with the Dome photo, remove the main scene and just render that Dome as a background. No scene, Draw Dome on.
Then, in Photoshop, stack the scene render over the background Dome render.
So just curious (and apologies for coopting the thread, though I was wondering about using the yosemite pack in iray also), but for iray, if I have an hdri file that is an image, if I have dome and ground on you are saying that it will render the image as background and the ground as the ground of the background? Or do I need an hdri duf I bought here?
You can plug any HDRI in the render settings environment tab. A lot of the free ones I found, I had to bring into PS and change the exposure to a higher value before it would look right though.
If you render with dome on, it will render the HDRI as a background to your image. If you turn the ground on, it will make an invisible ground plane that your scene will cast shadows on. If you have both together, the HDRI will render in the background, and your scene will cast shadows onto the invisible ground plane, which will make it look like they're casting shadows onto the HDRI ground. If the HDRI has a bumpy ground or lots of objects this doesn't work very well because the shadow will still be flat.
Thanks, I was trying help carrie58 and got in too deep. I would just use the render engine it was designed for, personally.
Thank you Northof45 ,and Divemakeup ,and everybody else , well I tried loading the hdr's to uberenviroment2 light and the jpg to the dome diffused and ambient ......it showed properly in preview but when I rendered there was nothing showing up ,these are the freee hdri from HDRIHaven so I'm thinking they must work in Iray not 3DLight ..... darn it
You should be able to get something, image-based lighting was around before Iray existed. Try adding one channel at a time to see what works and what doesn't. I've never gotten those settings right the first time when adding things in manually.
I tried with a single .HDR file from Skies of iRadiance in the light channel for Uberenvironment2, and in the Diffuse and Ambient channels of the Environment sphere and got an image. Make sure the sphere is set to Visible in Render, and that Diffuse Active and/or Ambient Active are on and not zeroed out. Diffuse alone might seem dull, ambient makes it pop.
Try one of the presets for UE2 that come with Studio and replace the image files (one .jpg and one .tif) it loads with the one (.hdr) you want. That should at least have the settings you'll need. Note, the presets have the Environment Sphere set to Visible: Off.
Thank you Northof45 ,I'll try again in the morning .........
Help.
Is there anyway to get my model to lie in my sunflower field? And a way to zoom in on it?
I tried messing with setting in "perspective" and "camera" views. Tried "Infinite" and "Finite." Tried Dome Raidus and Dome Multiplier.
Using: Daz 4.20, backdrop HDRI, Iray Rendering
The HDRI is just a flag image that wraps around a shpere, so it can't partially obscure things. You could use a prop of some kind (e.g. some cylinders, tall and thin for the stalks, whide and flat for the flowers) placed to line up with the flowers and aply the Advanced Iray Node proerpties to them, from Scripts/Uitlities/ under Daz Studio Formats, then turn on the Iray Matte option that that adds.
Thanks Richard for answering so quickly. I will try that.