Okay I did the hollow sphere thingy, and mapped a dl'd image form the HDRI site (although it ended up upside down on the sphere, then I put 4 (I know, not enough)lights at 15 clustered at the top of the sphere, then put some stuff to look at on the ground..... Now, first, is this faked HDRI? Second what am I looking for, shadows, natural lighting, reflections? And, although I've read all the posts on this stuff I guess I'm not clear on a few things;

-I thought the scene could be lit by the just the image mapped on the sphere, without radial lights, yes, no?

-To light the scene by just the image what are the settings? (so far I've been unsucessful with this)

-Is a light dome necessary?

-Does the sky need to be disabled?

-Does the sphere need to be transparent?

-Is this just for reflective surfaces?

-I noticed the shadows were hard edged, I assume I change this in the light lab for all the lights used, yes?

And last I'm I even close to what it is supposed to look like?

Ok, first of all I'm no expert. Real Hdri do not need additional lighting, unfortunatly bryce does not support Hdri. A Lightdome is not necessary, you can do with just a couple of lights, but it helps. The sphere does not need to be transparent if you place the lights inside it. otherwise yes, a bit transparent. To round things up i really tink you should ask ornlu, he seems to know what he's doing.

-I thought the scene could be lit by the just the image mapped on the sphere, without radial lights, yes, no? ~Yes but it has to be rendered in true ambience mode -To light the scene by just the image what are the settings? (so far I've been unsucessful with this) ~True Ambience and a lot of fiddling with the ambient values of each material. -Is a light dome necessary? ~no but it really looks best with atleast a few lights. -Does the sky need to be disabled? ~Yes, the sky has to be black (otherwise artifacts) and the sun needs to be disabled. -Does the sphere need to be transparent? ~What sphere? The hdri sphere should not be transparent. Nor the sphere outside of it. -Is this just for reflective surfaces? ~No, though it seems to have the most pow when used with them. Pow being popular appeal =P. Anyway, you can use it with non reflective surfaces so long as you turn on true ambience. -I noticed the shadows were hard edged, I assume I change this in the light lab for all the lights used, yes? ~Or render with soft shadows and crank the shadow edge blur up in the light lab. Since you're going to render on true ambience, you might as well use soft shadows (and just a light or two). Furthermore, cool render. Although, I think you may have remapped the ldri incorrectly, or was it originally a hdri to begin with? Because it appears to have some strange distortions to it.

HDRI= "High Dynamic Range illumination" -- the "high dynamic range" means that it supports a wider range of intensities than the 255 levels previously available. This image is beautiful, and shows artful use of what I'd call a "lightmap", but its not an HDR lightmap. Does that make sense?

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First, great image, Zhann. Second, I am also having mapping problems (now that I know what sphere I'm supposed to be mapping). If I take a regular rectangular pano and map it spherically, it comes out distorted (and the two ends of the pano don't match up at the equator of the sphere). If I use HDRI Lab to make a spherical distortion, and map that (spherically), I get a HUGE artifact where the two ends of the pano meet. I've not yet tried downloading images from the HDRI site simply because I haven't a clue in hell how those would be mapped to the sphere, and if Zhann doesn't feel she has a handle on it, then you gotta know I'm really out in the fog.

here are a few sample jpeg files that are "stretched" the right way. http://www.renderring.com/hdri/indoormaps.html The sky does not have to be black to my knowledge, but it would be wise to change the haze color to black for a radiosity look. Disable the sun. The best material to apply to the hdr hollow ball is both dots in the first ambient and diffuse channels. Then add a dot for ambience (the one in the middle of the window, not the one at the top.) Now leave the diffusion dot blank but move the slider to 100. Now go to the pulldown near the first component window and disable cast shadows and recieve shadows. This will make the image appear bright, but also be affected by lights you add to the scene. diffuse--dot ambient--dot 100--diffusion-no dot ambience--dot A faster way of faking illumination by the sphere using no lights and no true ambience is blurry reflections (which actually render quite fast without shadows) To do this, make all the materials besides the hdr spere 30 diffuse and 70 reflective, or some combination of the two that add to 100. (more diffuse and less reflection=brighter colors and less illumination effect. For mirrored objects, leave reflection high and diffusion very low or zero, e.g. a mirrored sphere. Leave glass objects the way they are, don't add diffuse or reflection values) Always leave ambience at zero. Now here's the trick. Edit the whitness of the specular halo valo in each objects material to give more blurring or less blurring. More white=more blurring and less white=less blurring. Objects with a black specular halo will not be blurred at all. For most mirrored objects, however, a setting as high as RGB 40 40 40 is acceptable. Don't worry if you lose the specular highlights for the reflection, as these will be replaced by the more natural lighting captured on the hdr image. For matte objects (non-reflective objects), make the specular halo rgb 254 254 254 and make reflection 30 or lower. Boost the metallicity all the way up and reduce specdularity until it is no longer blown out. Add one light to the scene and disable shadows. Place it behind the camera so that it is illuminating the scene from the front. Enable blurry reflections at 16rpp to test render and render at 64 rpp. Enjoy!

Interesting, I've tried it with no dot on diffusion set at 100, and dot on diffusion set at 0, also dot on diffusion set at 100 and I see no difference in the render. We're talking mid part of the screen here ... the value channels.

And, by the way, Zhann. I think that's the problem you are having. Whatever panos you are using are not hemispherical ... and it's causing those weird mapping artifacts.

I'm going to have to try this again, my last attempt was less than satisfying. Looks great anyway Zhann whether it is a true fake HDRI or not. 8) Catlin

Thanks, guys. In this this sun and sky were left at default. and I mapped this(top pic) to the inside sphere(neg one, spherically), both are opaque, but for some reason it's upside down(go figure)....I really like the quality of the lighting, it looks more natural, but I wanted to make sure I was understanding the concept correctly. The settings on that mat are in the bottom pic....I have a wip in which I was considering using this type of lighting. Ornlu, and madmax thanks I'll check the thread.......

Another question, I need to bring in a figure, more than likely it will be Vicky with a realistic texture map, will weird things happen to her skin using this lighting, and are there any pitfalls I should be aware of before attempting it?

And is there a detailed, step by step post or tutorial, that explains this lighting technique (fake HDRI or Radiosity, etc) in plain language so us lighting challenged can understand it? I want to do more with the lighting in my scenes......:)

Oh yeah, what exactly is it that I accomplished above(first post), global lighting, lightmapping, radiosity.....? So I use the correct term as well, no sense confusing people unnecessarily....8P

I see one thing right off ... the images that are meant to map just to the equator of the sphere have the bottom half of the image black. That way the horizon line of the photographic section is actually at the same level as the horizon line of the plane. (Am I making sense?) Map the attached to your sphere and you'll see what I mean.

That's a 10-4, and I'll do that to my image above, see what happens

The only problem with using blurry refletions is that everything gets a weird pearly look. Not to mention that on high polygon objects blurry relections gets to be extremely slow. Madmax, often if the sky isn't black you will get strange artfacts when rendering with true ambience on. I have learned to just change the sky to black whenever I use a ldri sphere.