Now load in your HDRI map, we are using Hyperfocal’s
VHDRI_Cloudy01_sml.hdr, and were impressed
that the full size version (14,000x7,000) actually
loaded without crashing/hanging if we need it for larger renders in the future. For lighting purposes there doesn’t seem to be much difference between using the tiny lighting.hdrs or the full size image.
Go to Rendering -> Environment -> Background Environment Map. Choose bitmap, and select your HDR. In the file open window I generally leave gamma set to “use image’s”. Click open, and you are presented with the HDR Load settings. Set your white point so that you have a fairly bright version of the HDR showing in the preview window. You can tweak this later if its too bright or dark. Make sure that under “internal storage” you have “Real Pixels” selected and hit ok.
Now open your material editor, click and drag an instance of the HDRI from the environment map into a free slot, and set it to spherical under mapping coordinates.
All that’s left now is to setup a starting point for IP and Importons. The following settings are certainly far from efficient. If you would like to optimize render
times I strongly suggest checking out this post (it provides a visual breakdown of what the settings do):
Mental Images Forum post.
http://forum.mentalimages.com/showthread.php?t=4757&highlight=importons
So click on the IP slot in the MatEd (the nice grey box!) and start playing!
The output image has low anti alias sampling (hence the broken lines on the garage door). If you uncheck ‘Rebuild’ after your first render, you can adjust things like AA and AO and the Irradience map will be read from the specified file, in this case the file is named IP_map.
This image uses the following settings:
Ambient Occlusion has been applied to the MR material.
If you’d like a far more technical description of these settings than I could ever provide, check the text file that comes with the ctrl ghost plugin.
If you’d like to boost the dynamic range of any of your HDRIs to create harder edged shadows, you can artificially boost the sun strength in photoshop (CS2 and onwards). Select the sun or an area that the sun could logically appear, and either copy paste in a sun from another, higher dynamic range sky (and hope it matches ok) or you can make a small circle selection and select image exposure, then crank it up a few stops. We found that there seems to be a limit to how far you can take this before you start getting a poor looking “sun”. You’ll have to experiment
with each image.
Well that about covers it, so I hope this helps you with your HDRs and exterior lighting with the new IP and Importons!
Thanks for reading!
Tutorial by Extra Artists: www.extraartists.com?itp
VHDRI Skies by Hyperfocal Design:
www.hyperfocaldesign.com?itp
About Extra Artists - Extra Artists use leading edge technologies to fuse design with 3D graphics to create immersive visual solutions for a range of industries. Our team produce real-time 3D content for games & mobile development, character creations, product renders, architectural visualisations, digital illustrations and 3D logos.
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