Need help with HDRI.
wildbillnash
Posts: 756
I have a couple of problems with using HDRI's. First, I have some that has no lights, like the Yosemite ones. They always render out black.
But the biggest problem is all the others. All figures I place in a HDRI scene ends up floating at least 2 feet above ground. I see ads on DAZ for HDRI's and all their figures are grounded. Is there a video tutorial that can help me ground my figures? I saw some I would like to purchase this morning, but not if I can ground my people.
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I don't have those two products but they should have lights even tho they are older products - have you checked that the lighting wasn't set to "Scene Only"?
You can definitely adjust where the floor is with HDRIs as being able to "fake" a floor is a common use of them as a cheap background. I think Jay covers a bit of this in Ep15 of the masterclass: https://www.daz3d.com/community/masterclass. Even tho that is part of the lighting section, I am pretty sure he mentions about the floor briefly.
The Yosemite scene is from the HDR ProSets Yosemite Pack Two. I can't find anything about a scene only. I'm looking at the folder for the product under the Products tab and there's the Skydome under Enviroments and Other under Lights. From what I can see they are both the same with the same results, Black Screen.
Well, they are only cheap. I will buy them and take a look.
Thanks, but I really don't want you to spend money on my account.
If you look in Render Settings > Environment is the HDRI then loaded in the Environment map?
Felis, yep.
I think I finally got the idea of grounding my figures. It has to be an illusion. The trick is placing the shadow just right, angle the view just right, and pose the figure to not cross anything, like a door and the figure is behind it, just right.
Oh well, too late now.
Anyway, I can see what you mean about these rendering black. Are you using Iray to render because these do not work in the right way for that out of the box. This product sets up a dome prop object and applies the images to that which seems to work fine when rendering using 3Delight - I really don't have much experience using that so can't advise on issues there.
This also means my advise above about the masterclass tutorial won't apply.
You CAN take the JPGs from the product and add then to Iray's Environment Map but they will need some work as they look a bit washed out - see below example:
Using JPGs in the environment map will give always give a very washed out result, without any real shadows as the dynamic range is way too low.
Thanks, SofaCitizen. I didn't know Yosemite was only for 3Delight. I was trying to render in Iray. I wish there was a way to keep things like HDRI for 3Delight and Iray seperate.
I watched the video you suggested, several parts a few times over, and now understand more about it. Though I still need to go it some more. A few of the things it mention don't seem to apply, but most likely I was missing something. It gave me a headache so I'm going to take a break from it for awhile. Thanks again.
Okay, SofaCitizen, I have another question for you. I saw on the video about getting HDRI's from Poly Haven and how to load the image. But if I get several different HDRI files, I wouldn't know which is which without an image. I was thinking about creating a subfolder for them in my HDRI folder and copy the file into it. But is doesn't come with an image. Do you know another way to save the HDRI image so I can have a pic of it in the preview?
Yeah, I was just trying to see if those assets could be used in Iray without much faff. Perhaps someone smarter than me could do it.
Yeah. Even tho the "What's Included" is generally an unstructured free-type area you can normally look out for "Iray materials" or words to that effect in most other products. Not so much in these type of products where I guess it just includes what it needs to in order to make the product work in the render engine at the time. Products do not get retro-actively tagged or their descriptions updated so you just have to be a little careful to mkae sure the products are suitable for your usage. To be safe you should probably stick to any HDRI products with a higher SKU, those that list "render settings" in the included items or those that do have iray in the name.
Sounds like good advice. Thanks again. Now I just need to figure out how to create a 'menu' of files so I can see which is which.
Sorry, for this one I do not have a good answer myself.
The .HDR files are not items that Daz Studio recognises in the Content Library and Windows doesn't preview or create icons/thumbs for the files. OSX can do it but I assume you are running windows so that does not help. I had a quick look and it seems that this is something people have asked in the past and the solutions were to generally to make them yourself via third-party applications unfortunately.
EDIT: It does seem like something that is potentially scriptable so perhaps someone has built a script and I didn't find it while searching.
Thanks for the feedback. I'm glad I'm not the only one. You're right to assume I'm using Windows.
About creating the image myself, I think I could do it using Photoshop but I wouldn't know how to get the image to activate the file. I wonder if I could Google it?
You can just click on the image in Environmant Map and select browse, and browse to where you have downloaded the HDRI (or EXR) from Poly Heaven. There you can select different sizes, where larger will take up more VRAM when rendering (on GPU). You probably want 8k (or larger) if you want to see the image, and not just use it for lighting.
If you mean having an image to activate it within the Content Library or Smart Content then basically you'd need to create a duf file. So, in brief terms: Start from new/blank scene, Create -> New Environment Options Node, Add the HDRI to the Environment Map, Save As -> Render Settings Preset (making sure you save this preset within one of your base libraries). That would make it available in the Content Libary - to add it to Smart Content there are a few more steps slightly outside the scope of this. Then once you have the duf file you have a clickable icon and so I believe if you save your manually-created thumbnail with the same as the duf file - only swapping ".duf" for ".png" - then Daz Studio should pull it in as the thumbnail.
Thanks, I'll have to give it a try, once I understand everything you said (it's a little outside of my scope of knowledge, but hey, that's what the brain is for).
Well, just tried it. No image in the icon for the HDRI.
Yeah, sorry, it's almost bedtime for me so just quickly listed the outline which *should* work. I may have missed something tho as I hand't gone through it myself. Obviously all this is usually done for you if you buy a HDRI product at the store (assuming it is designed for iRay), so while it's nice to get things for free sometimes there is often a little extra work that is required as a compromise.
Sorry, I have just tried to do this myself and it didn't work so I have definitely missed some things. Saving the render preset creates an empty thumbnail so you can over-write that with a custom thumb you make yourself which does show up in Content Library (after a refresh). However, clicking the icon didn't add the environment node which defeats the point :( Maybe I will have another look tomorrow after work.
Thanks for the info. You're right about the limitation when you download a freebie or purchased from somewhere else. Usually, though, there is a work around. Just finding it is the tricky part.
Have a good night and I'll check back later. I'm going to experiment some myself before bedtime.