The reason I ask is I'm trying to get good reflections and lighting from some free, evidently LQ HDR images that I found. Everything appears muddy. I haven't found a good sky yet with good blues (seems HDR makers dont want to give em up. Basically, I'm trying to see if IBL or HDR is worth it. I'd crop out the bottom half as I'm building the environment...just want a good sky. It seems to heavily affect the render time. 1. Does anyone know where to get 1 hq sample HDR daytime sky? I tried the backroom but no samples there. I'd buy more if they work but I wanna see how good I can get it looking before I decide. 2. Anyone who has worked with HDR, care to drop some knowledge?

Well a variety of sites do have hdr images that are free.Regarding quality, it depends on the setup you use. For instance Cinema 4D supports hdr images and there are multiple ways of using them and different setups as well. Same goes for Maya, Softimage, etc. But this take time to setup. I myself just upgraded to Vue 5 from Vue 4 and i must say that i am very impressed by the results of hdri in Vue. It seems that they have integrated them well. Setup takes only a few minutes. E-on Software actually have a tutorial about this subject so be sure to check it out. Hope it helps, -LeFrog

Message edited on: 12/13/2005 16:43

The HDRI used in the Vue 5i tutorial is a blue sky. But with clouds and sun directly into the camera and all out of focus (simulating depth of field). Could you experiment with that?

I did their tutorial with that image and got this (same as in manual):

_jc
art-head-start.com
Art training e-book for digital artists

Message edited on: 12/13/2005 18:31

Attached Link: http://www.debevec.org

Attached Link: http://www.doschdesign.com/products/hdri/

Try loading the HDRI file from the Vue 5 HDRI folder (under Bitmaps) that comes with Vue 5. The file is the FIRST ONE
called "ChromeStudio".

The major adjustments for your HDRI scene are:

1.Sky Dome Lighting Gain. This is like a Camera aperature which allows more or less light in your Global Scene. Usually you have to adjust it UP.

2.Overall Skylight Color. This is the SECOND most important adjustment that controls "Color Temperature"- or basically the color tone of your Global Light- Warm, Cool, Sunset, etc. For POSER SKIN a subtle dark brown is a good color as it matches the general lighting used in POSER. (Poser defaults to a general Warm-Brown lighting setup.)

1. ROTATE your scene. By selecting the entire scene you can ROTATE it until the particular lighting you like hits your model they way you like. This is more tricky as every HDRI file is different and the main light comes from any number of places- or is very diffused- depending upon the HDRI file you load.

free hdri resources at:

http://www.sachform.de/download_EN.html
http://www.debevec.org/Probes/
http://www.evermotion.org/images/free/noc4.zip
http://www.evermotion.org/images/free/evermotion_hdri_sample.zip
http://www.cs.huji.ac.il/~danix/hdr/results.html
http://www.realtexture.com/hdri1.htm

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?Form.ShowMessage=1953793

Just one reminder. If you need to change the apparent exposure of an HDR image then do it in Photoshop CS2 or HDRShop. Vue's in-built "exposure" control is false in it's description - it does not change the exposure, it only changes the brightness of the whole image. In this respect Vue does not fully support HDRI. Cheers

The HDRI sky dome used in this image was purchased from Bountiful Knight in the marketplace here. Well worth experimenting with! http://www.renderosity.com/photos/GAL_200512/GalleryImage1112237.jpg

HDRI is great in Vue. The only way to get excellent quality is to buy your images or beg steal or borrow a good SLR camera rig and make your own. First thing is to get HDRShop and read the tut's. The images take some effort but they are not realy that hard to do. HDR is growing by leaps and bounds, including HDR monitors on the horizon and Photo Shop support for the images. With HDRShop you can allso do panoramic renders in Vue with a range of different lighting settings and create HDR images from them. Get ready for HUGE render times though.

I'm passing on HDR. Just not fast enough and difficult to wield good results.