I've been researching HDRI the past few days and a question crossed my mind that I can't seem to find the answer to. Perhaps I am totally confused about how this works, but I ask someone to help me. As far as I understand, to create an HDRI image, you need a light probe and an HDRI tool. The light probe consists of a reflective sphere. My question is: Can you simulate HDRI by rendering your scene on a reflective sphere then loading that image into the HDRI tool?

Yup. It would be like making your own HDRI, but just in the virtual world, instead of the real one. AS

cool, now I just have to work up the guts to actually try it, and hope my computer doesn't crash or run out of virtual memory. Thanks

It should work fine... There's a thread a few pages back titled " Just playing around" by Agent Smith himself, he helped me a ton in that thread, and I think there is some essential Bryce HDRI/GI information in it.. Check it out.. I'm digging the whole HDRI/GI thing, it's a lot of fun and the results are beuatiful. I'm getting Carrara 3 becuase it supprts true HDRI.. But Bryce's fake HDRI is pretty damn cool! kaom

Most people don't create a LDRI from a 3D render because the popular idea is to take photo's and photo-realism INTO the computer and your scene. But, I have noticed more and more making quickie or full blown, (seamless) LDRI's, and even true HDRI's out of their 3D renders. There is a definite "fun" factor to it. ;o) AS

Nice info there AS.

I just cheat bigtime. As long as you're not using really reflective objects in the scene, you can sometimes get away with just pasting a normal photo to the sphere. Does mean that you either have to increase the DOF or change the POV so you can't see the sphere (or at least the seam), but can work ok(ish).

My challenge "Mosquito" this month uses just a normal photo. Since the background and hdri is more for colour than anything.
Same with my chess set, since the DOF is off the scale I got away with it.

Oh, yeah, I 've used all sorts of regular photo's, or just some made up hand painted pic I would do in Photoshop. Like you say, as long as you don't see a seam or whatnot, doesn't truly matter. ;o) AS

It was your chess set that set me off on my search of HDRI. It is really great, and I was always wondering why I can't make such realistic renders in Bryce.

Since we cannot use HDRI information in Bryce, we really only want a spherical LDRI. Just a spherical image. There would be no point to trying to jam all that extra information into the image using HDR shop if we intend to use it in Bryce. Agent Smith, am i right here??

True, yet HDRShop is only used here to take the "mirrir ball" image and transform it into a Lat/Long picture. The mirror ball image isn't really usable in Bryce as-is, there are lots of seams and black areas. AS

Thanks. Now I know what to do with those true HDRI spherical images...convert them to lat/long. Thanks! Just out of curiosity, I wonder how many images of that virtual mirror ball we would have to render to properly put them together in HDR shop? Should have that info on the site. Ill check

Two. There is a tutorial on the HDRShop site; http://www.debevec.org/HDRShop/tutorial/tutorial5.html I'm gonna try it out later with my Bryce render, lol. It's an involved process, but managable given enough caffeine. AS

I just tried it and it is not so bad. I have been putting this off for some time! TMG