Playing with Vue 5's HDRI feature I rendered a trio of Daz (www.daz3d.com) characters imported via Poser 5.

UD Hatchling dragon is a direct import and came out a little bright and shiney.

Knuckle-cracking Freak was partially re-textured in Vue 5. The model importing process misread some of the figure labelling i.e. 8 or 9 sets of fingernails, most of which were actually head parts. There are also a few seams showing tho' this could be my recolouring as the mislabelled body parts were a tad confusing.

The Robot has been completely retextured using Vue 5 materials with very minor tweaking and, I reckon, came out best. Note the reflection in the visor.

I tweaked Vue's OpenGL settings for speed as things slowed down on my box with all three charaters loaded (AMD 3200 1GB Radeon 9800 Pro). But it worked fine.

Now all I need is $600 for a decent HDRI program. Donations anyone? ;-)))

Message edited on: 10/06/2004 06:45

Cheers,
Mark

why does it look so unreal? Is that a single picture for the backround?

That's the problem with HDRI images - they will display the base HDRI image in the background. This makes for great lighting and reflections, but it will also introduct a background that you may want to mask in some situations. In general, HDRI images work best on metallic objects, inserted in a high quality photograph, or in a background that does not include the ground or the sky (if you don't have an image with enough resolution).

• agiel - www.linfa.net

The robot looks good there! Nice soft shadows you get from HDRI. I think knuckles detracts from the reality factor because of his nigh on impossible physique. With feet that big! Well you know what they say!! That file is sort of familiar, a bit like Dosch stuff in Carrara. Rokol.

The whole thing was an experiment: firstly to test Vue's ability to import Daz figures via Poser.

Secondly to see how unrealistic objects looked in a realistic environment. Placing the figures directly against the photographic background made for a greater contrast between real and unreal. It illustrates Agiel's point well: metal or inanimate objects work best.

Rokol, Vue 5 comes with 5 HDRI images supplied by www.doschdesign.com. Well spotted! I've used HDRI in Carrara 3 for engineering product images so I'm looking forward to comparing v4 Pro to Vue 5.

Cheers,
Mark

Sorry, that should read "comparing Carrara Studio v4 Pro to Vue 5".

Cheers,
Mark