horizontal HDRI?
kenshaw011267
Posts: 3,805
I've been working on a scene that is a skyscraper office. I'd very much like to get the very classic view out the windows of such. I work in such so I know what it should look like, if I had the equipment and know how I'd take the images myself.
Every HDRI I've found is at ground level and no amount of fiddling makes the background look right out the window. At first I was thinking I'd rent the equipment and take the pictures myself since I am in the office by myself one day a week and the reception area has floor to ceiling windows but apparently and HDRI has to be a 360 degree dome. which would not just be a waste getting the perfect orientation to line up the window in the HDRI with the window in the scene would be a PITA.
So then I thought what would work is an HDRI taken horizintally right on the shell of a building. But of course that won't work either. No one wants that expensive equipment up that high for that long for all sorts of obvious reasons plus I have no idea how to convince Daz to reorient the dome that way.
So does anyone have any idea to get the look I'm after?
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Comments
Maybe one of these?
https://www.daz3d.com/aerial-ibl-wide-open-skies-hdri
https://www.daz3d.com/fantasy-ibl-above-the-clouds-hdri
Not to be rude but have you ever looked out the window of a high rise?
More like this:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/u1rx5gpzzjhuf3w/LondonHouse Chicago River View.951215e578065fa88f73d019e26db330.jpg?dl=0
Why do you need a 360 degree HDRI? Can't you just use a regular photo as a backdrop in the Environment pane? Or render your image to PNG with transparent window areas and add the out-the-window image as a background layer with an image editor.
If you have a bunch of skyscraper assets, then you can make one yourself, using the fisheye lense and rendering to a beauty canvas. I did post a short guide somewhere on these forums, will have to search a bit to find it back if you want to try though.
The backdrop looks awful, to be blunt. I try to avoid PS because I hate working in Ps but if I have to I will.
I'll see about the fisheye lens thing.
I wanted something like that, and looked around at what was available, and didn't find anything suitable, so I made my own using Urban Sprawl 3. This is done at something like 1500-1800 ticks up, because I was just after a view outside an urban building like here, and did them in various lighting conditions.
You can, of course, place your camera higher to see more rooftops.
I have one taken with a fisheye lens on the roof of a building but I have utterly no idea where I got it from
Looks good
TBH not sure about the licensing and all that but I'd gladly pay for a package of those. I know the theory of how to make an HDRI, and I can obviously build an outside scene and light it. But that's a lot of time. But to get something that is essentially "gritty urban HDRI every lighting condition you want" series 1 through N might make some cash.
On the contrary almost every HDRI is taken about one metre above ground level (the height of a tripod) which makes it very difficuly when you're trying to work with child characters and you want to see their feet on the ground without looking down on them. I agree that it would be a good idea if there was more variety in the height level at which HDRIs were taken, in my case a bit lower than one metre please.
While strictly true I don't think the idea was that they were literally resting the camera on the ground but rather that it was not elevated to the extent of a floor of a high-rise building.