This image rendered in ONLY 11 minutes using just the light from the St. Peters Light Probe- a free HDR file from one of the HDRI websites. HDRI is WAY-FASTER than even Radiosity in Vue 5 (which this is rendered in)- as long as you DON'T use mesh based hair. I HIGHLY recommend KOZ hair because it is very fast. My first attempt on this image ran great until I got to the hair- then it slowed down to an INCREDIBLE CRAWL. I switched out the MESH hair for Koz hair and then rendering went very smoothly... Also note: this is NOT meant to be a masterpiece. This is one of my old Vicky 2 test files- which was the first thing I grabbed. The hair is also Kyoko Mk II. You can see problems with the mesh on V2's elbow- which normally I would POST-OUT in Photoshop. However I went ahead and just posted the RAW file. My newer V3 set-ups should look WAY-BETTER once I get them ready. I am EXTREMELY excited about the potential of HDRI rendering with Vicky- she looks very realistic! Too bad you can't see my Hi-Rez file straight out of Vue 5- its really STUNNING!

Veritas, what do you mean by "mesh" hair? Koz hair is a mesh too. The pic looks real good by the way. Very realistic.

Render time 22 Min.

Maxxxmodelz- what I mean is how Koz does them versus how others have done them in the past- as example Jim Burton's San Francisco hair- its one of my favorite styles but the Vue 5 HDRI render just CHOKES on it (It renders- just VERY SLOWLY). KOZ uses hair mats instead of individual hairs in the mesh- hopefully that makes in clear...

Sorry- forgot the Nudity button on those last two... It's really hard to describe how much MORE REALISTIC these renders look when you see them Hi-REZ inside Vue. I wish VUE could save 64 bit images in PSD format...

Can someone e'splain to this Non-VUE owning Newbie what the heck HDRI is and why does it look so damn fine?

Attached Link: http://www.stewreo.de/poser/hdri.html

HDRI is short for High Dynamic Range Imaging - which means images that use more than just 8 bits per color channel (which is what your average TIFF, PNG, JPEG, etc image uses) with floating points, resulting in (bluntly put) brighter brights and darger darks.

What most people think HDRI were is in fact IBL - Image Based Lighting: Taking an image of a real world scene as a source of light.

Anyhow, I have written (and made available for free) a script that allows you to use light sets generated created from HDR images inside Poser, click the link to see examples. If you want to use an HDR or LDR image as base for your lights in ProPack or P5, it's there and you can use it (and Eric van Dyke wrote a tutorial about it.

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?ForumID=12368&Form.ShowMessage=1958980

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?ForumID=12356&Form.ShowMessage=1957581

Get this--It rendered about 80% FASTER than the Radiosity render! Notice the beautiful SOFT SHADOWS. Even MORE Photo-Realistic than the Radiosity images...

Message edited on: 10/09/2004 00:44

"And yes, this IS how Hollywood does their 3D special effects lighting!" True, except Hollywood usually "fakes" their HDR lighting by using a direct lighting rig set up by professionals for a GI feel (soft shadows, etc.), then HDR maps for realistic reflections, which are added in multiple pass renders, and put together in post. Often times they will use a technique called "baking" to actually render the HDRI into the textures for use in games and other situations. As processing capability and GI calculations speed up with new technological advances in rendering, however, it IS possible you'll see more and more true GI being used in Hollywood movies, but right now it's still mostly "smoke and mirrors" so to speak, although there are exceptions... MentalRay, Brazil, and Vray have been used to render true GI in a production environment, but that's the exception, not the rule. I know you'll probably argue with me about that, but just to validate my point, head on over to CGTalk.com and ask them if real GI/HDRI calculations are the lighting standard used in major motion pictures and FX. And yes, HDRI as it's being used in Vue is still a form of Global Illumination. ;-)

I find light probes useful for controlling metalic specular highlights, with the most natural lighting coming from a spherical HDRI map applied to the luminance channel of a sky dome set not to be seen by the camera but only seen by the rays - does VUE5 have that ability (to use multiple sky domes?)

The light probe I'm using here is from http://www.debevec.org/Probes/--specifically: St. Peter's Basilica, Rome 1500 1500 Dynamic range: 200,000:1 "Used as some of the illumination data for the main sequences of "Fiat Lux". Assembled from two radiance images of a mirrored ball and then touched up at the bottom using Photoshop. Each Radiance image was assembled from six exposures, three stops apart, from a Kodak DCS520 digital camera." &&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&& The experiments I'm working on right now have me the most excited I've ever been since first getting interested in 3D. In this new version of Vue, I can say "We ain't in Kansas anymore, Toto". Global Illumination- HDRI- Image Based Lighting- however you want to label it, is EXTREMELY interesting for me because my original background has been Photography- and this is the closest I've ever come to being able to use 3D software like a real Photo Camera. The really cool thing too, for me at least, is the neat extra goodie called "Post-Processing Effects" It's like being a Hollywood "Colorist" and having the ability to do renders that have a Steven Spielberg "Saving Private Ryan" look, or a retro "Sky Captain" look- or a really retro old sci-fi movie look. I'm not an animator- but I think when animators really discover this very COOL new tool, they will create VERY ARTISTIC animations on a Cinematic level of coloration. I suppose you could have multiple sky-domes as an effect in Vue 5- but its not rigged that way, since after all, this is BRAND NEW stuff for the general Vue user base. (Look for more advanced features in Vue 5 Pro- due out later this year.) I'm already using the HDR-IBL Skydome effect as an unseen light source with a secondary skydome for a more "natural" looking sky- then adding point lights to scene elements... The new Vue 5 look, for me, is NOTHING like Vue 4- I really feel like I've gotten a $2000 upgrade- entirely new rendering capabilities unlike anything I've had available before. PLUS- the render times with these Light Probe-IBL effects are VERY FAST. That's what REALLY gets me excited- knowing that I can do photo-realism and see it rendered in just 10-20 minutes for a 2K size image! (Of course, I'm using an Athlon 64!).

Now this is cross purposing!

Thank you Veritas777. I use Poser items in Cinema4D 8.5 which has some excellent HDRI features too. As a VUE4 user I was interested in this post to see how VUE5 fared with HDRI's. Perhaps, if possible, you will kindly do an example of a VUE5 scene lit solely by a spherical HDRI map? Don't forget the horizontal and vertical cross maps too - they have a use for mapping over 'box' type objects. The HDRI's I use come from Dosch Design, who, amongst other things, do a fine set of 'extreme' high rez HDRI's. http://www.doschdesign.com/e_start/

...to Vue Forum since it is all about rendering and lighting in that program. Please remember that we do have software-specific forums and galleries so that users of each application have easier access to the information and ways to show off the results. Carolly Renderosity Moderator

Becco_UK - the St. Peter's Light Probe IS a spherical HDRI map- go to the website and look it. And yes, you can use the cross style HDRI maps in Vue 5 too. ALL of my above examples were lit with the SINGLE St. Peter's spherical map- no other source light was used. Also, Vue 5 comes with some free Dosch Design HDR files- maybe the same ones you are using?

Veritas777 - Thanks for the info' but a HDRI map is completely different to a Spherical map. Light probes usualy consist of a sphere image within a square whereas spherical maps are a fully 'unwrapped' sphere onto a rectangular map. I suspect this may down to terminology though. Light probes are pretty much useless for full image based lighting. Sphical maps are applied to the luminance channel of the material applied to a sky dome or similar.