Anyone tried Iray Sky Pro?
hwgs1971
Posts: 131
Can anyone recommend Iray Sky Pro by KindredArts? I own a lot of HDRI skies and have been disappointed by all of them. My goal is realism. The one that produces the most realistic images in my opinion is the plain old Sun-Sky setting in Daz Studio, but then the sky is boring. Before I get my hopes up for yet another sky purchase only to be disappointed, I figured I'd ask because the description sounds like this may be exactly what I am looking for. I want the Daz Sun-Sky realism with a sky with clouds.
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Comments
...yes I did a few tests with it and it works beautifully with the Iray Sun/Sky, even using the Sun Dial setting instead of the World one. The Iray Sun maintains all its properties so if you lower it towards the horizon ithe light colour still changes.
To rotate the cloud dome, you don't do it in the Render Environment settings, but in the parameters tab (there is a slider that is labelled "Spin" for the cloud.
Here's one of the tests I did using the Midday setting
Wish I could get a refund all the products I purchased that use HDRIs (one of them Cloudscape Creator even crashed my display driver) as this is something I wanted to see for a long time.
Wow, that looks good, I'll give it a try. Thanks!
Update: This is absolutely perfect...exactly what I was looking for. Man I wasted so much money on all these sky HDRIs...
The Iray Worlds SkyDome appears to work on the same principle. There's a lot of flexibility with these sky dome systems compared to HDRI, but would the quality (dynamic range) of the light be up to that of a good HDRI?
I've been dabbling with 3D art for a year and a half now and feel like I've mastered most basics except lighting. It really is true that lighting is the most important thing. With every sky HDRI I've bought and (I own many) it seems the lighting looks fake and most importantly the characters' eyes look like they are made of very glossy glass. You can barely see the iris under the reflective shine. Switch to Sun-Sky and voila, the eyes look like eyes but now you can't have clouds. I usually compensate by adding a spotlight or Iray Light Probe Kit probe pointed at the eyes, but that usually creates other problems with unwanted overcast light. I just want a sky with clouds and eyes that look like eyes, not glossy glass oval-shaped shiny marbles. I'm probably doing something wrong but haven't figure it out yet.
This is why they say, and it's true, that lighting is the biggest factor to be considered (problem) with getting good "aesthetically pleasing" renders. Lighting has so many vairables to consider compared to everything else in your scene that it's way more complicated than everything else put together. After 100 years there's still no agreement on even how light works, particle/wave theory, quantum entanglement, wavefunction collapse vs many-worlds interpretation... it's still a complete mystery.
One way to get the sky you want using the sun-sky setting is to combine two renders in post work. Firstly render with sun-sky setting so that it lights your characters, plus any background as you want. With the first render ensure that "Draw Dome" in the render settings is off, and thus the sky is transparent. Next switch to the HDR with the sky you want, ensure "Draw Dome" is on, then spot render just the sky (or render the whole image if you like), and then layer the first image on the second in a photo editor and your done. The lighting you want, with the sky of your choice.
Great advise Havos. I use this method quite often. There's a lot to be said for spot-rendering in general, fixing post render problems, adding props/characters to rendered scenes etc.
...I have a number of HDRI sky sets and the "sun" is not always as as accurate as the Iray Sun.
..+1.
Not just the eyes, but skin tones as well. I've had to mess with tone mapping in a 2D programme to get hte same results I could in a raw render using the Iray Sun/Sky.
...that's fine until you have shadows that are cast on other elements in the scene
The primary drawback to post-work is the sheer volume of the number of renders.I got into this thinking I would make comics. The story I've been working on has over 800 camera shots. There's just no way I can modify all that.
The thing that really drives me nuts is ten years from now this will all be automated and easy. All the scene optimizing and MacGyver tricks we're using will be obsolete, and the computers will be cranking out complex scenes in a couple of minutes. All the tricks I used to know in Microsoft Excel 20 years ago, now anyone can do the same thing. It will be the same way with 3D art. But for today we have to learn and use these tricks.
It does look interesting but wondering about night skies, with a moon and so on..
I don't understand this draw back, all the elements you need to render are pointing the same way, ie as cast by the sun-sky render, the only thing missing is the sky. The only issue would be if the HDR you had displayed includes the sun, then anyone in theory could see that the shadows are not being cast as expected by the sun. However most people want HDRs for the interesting cloud patterns, not to show the sun, with the possible exception of a sunrise/sunset.
I see your point, but in my experience, compared to the often multiple hour long job of setting up a scene, the 1 minute job of laying on two layers is pretty minor.
Iray Sky Pro looks useful - I picked it up and will endeavour to try it out soon (free time is somewhat fleeting at the moment).
Thanks for the heads up :)
My secret technique is to render with Iray sun-sky and then photoshop in whatever sky photo I find suitable. HDRIs are a lottery because you never know if they're dynamic range for real. Some of the store bought ones weren't, cue the dull lightning, some of the free ones from hdrihaven were so you can't even bet based on their source.
KindredArts products are good quality and work as advertized, so no surprise this one is solid too.
.."dynamic range" that is the term I was grasping for (old codger here).
I've found some HDRIs where the temperature of the Sun light used was too "cool" (leaving skin looking greyish compared to the neutral set-up I use when to test render character I develop) or the light wasn't as luminous as the Iray Sun (or even AoA's Advanced Distant Light in 3DL particularly coupled with Parris' IBL Master). The Former meant having to either rebuild skins to adjsut to the light (I primarily useZev0's Skin Builder3 and Beutiful Skins for G3 as too many stock G3 skins seem too "orange" when rendered, even ones that are supposed to be light or fair), or mess with tone mapping in a 2D programme to make the skin look right without affecting other elements in the scene. The latter meant having to micro-manage camera settings to get a proper daylight appearance without things (particularly the sky) washing out.
Already have it..
Always looking for more, as have most of these types of things but looking for what else there might be out there..