The latest Poser newsletter described how to properly use the new HDRI background feature, so I thought I'd give it a try. This is the result.

After I saw this, I looked for the tutorial on how this worked. And then I tried it. This was my result

Some observations from me.

1. I had to load an empty scene to get it to work. If I loaded a scene that had things in it, the background was grayed out when I went into the material room, even if I turned off visibility of the ground.

2. Maybe it was just the HDRI I chose, but it looked a little washed out and didn't see a way to modify it.

3. The figure had no light on it in the Pose room. I had to render to see how he looked. He did have some light on him. But I wanted more. I also wanted this view of the HDRI, so I added a distant light and adjusted it.

Maybe I'm doing something wrong, but those were the challenges I encountered.

I don't think it does a particularly good job of matching the light to the figure, but maybe I'm biased by my results in Photoshop.

I used this setup maybe 2-3 years ago in a Poser 12 environment, so maybe it may help...

https://sites.google.com/view/grumpyoldfartssite/my-3d-cg-tips-and-how-tos#h.w21dovvyclc1

For best results, use a bracketed HDRI with multiple Exposure Values.

infinity10 posted at 10:24 PM Mon, 15 December 2025 - #4502316

For best results, use a bracketed HDRI with multiple Exposure Values.

Can you please explain what that means?

It is worth experimenting with a combination of lights and HDRI to strike a pleasing balance in your renders.  Offsetting the illumination too much in either direction will make the scene appear unnatural.  Find the best high-quality HDRI, 4K or higher, if the app can handle it.  Use images with a full tonal range. There may be instances where images skew the color balance, so be prepared to provide adequate lighting to counter the imbalance.

The Superfly render below demonstrates a scene lit with an HDRI and an infinite light set at 10% intensity and shadows to 50%.  The material shaders for the model were quickly converted to PBR, and Ambient Occlusion was added to enhance additional shadowing.  I used a Blackbody node to convert the lighting temperature to 10,000 Kelvin, a more natural way to introduce realistic lighting to Superfly renders.

That's lovely!

anupaum posted at 10:31 PM Mon, 15 December 2025 - #4502317

infinity10 posted at 10:24 PM Mon, 15 December 2025 - #4502316

For best results, use a bracketed HDRI with multiple Exposure Values.

Can you please explain what that means?

For an HDRI to effectively light up a scene, it should be a composite of the same image (in one file) taken at different exposure values (EVs).  Multiple-EV HDRIs will therefore illuminated the scene without any need for additional scene lights.   The quickest way to tell if an equirectangular HDRI file is a single-EV file is when the image is used as 360 background but the scene is still dull and poorly lit.  It must to be equirectangular, because it maps onto a spherical dome to enclose the scene.  An equirectangular image has proportions of Width: Height in the ration 2:1.

Thank you!