Why the Heck Didn't Anyone Teach Me About HDRIs?!
TheMysteryIsThePoint
Posts: 3,074
This is probably incredibly obvious to others, so please excuse me.
I was just poking around on cloud.blender.org because apparently if you subscribe to support Blender at any level, you get access to all of their resources that they used to make all the reference movies. There were some HDRIs there, and an online viewer. It seemed like they were 360 degree background images, and I thought "cool" so I downloaded one and set it as the environmental Background in the World tab in Blender, thinking that I'd just have a cool looking photorealistic background.
I had imported a complete figure from Daz, as an OBJ, wearing The Legend armor. I was prepared to futz around for hours re-texturing and becoming frustrated with trying to get the lighting right. But when I switched from LookDev to Rendered view...
Oh. My. God! I had missed the ENTIRE POINT of HDRI images! It's about LIGHTING!
With the HDRI, the figure looks so incredibly natural and realistic, inserted perfectly into the environment represented by the HDRI. Even with just the base color maps the came over with the OBJ, it looks gorgeous. I may not even bother configuring the other maps anymore, because it is already good enough for my purposes. I've been concentrating on materials, but it seems that proper lighting trumps proper materials.
I am totally surprised that in all the tutorials that I've seen in for Daz and Blender both, never has the utility of HDRIs been properly emphasized. Even when the subject was how difficult it is to get lighting right.
Again, everyone else probably knew this already, but wow. My life has changed :)
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Comments
Care to share a picture? I'd be interested to see the quality.
All of the light probe products in the Daz Store are HDRI with the exception of a small group of emissive props.
HDRIs are probably so easy to use, that the couple of interesting articles about their use snowed under the other articles.
The only thing to keep in mind with HDRI's: if you use a HDRI as an exterior background/lighting solution for an interior scene, that the walls will obviously be blocking a lot of the light coming from the HDRI, and that you will probably still need an additional interior light solution. Which can be quite the eye-opener in learning how much light you actually need from your regular regular interior lights, which is quite a lot, but will help you in the future when lighting a full interior scene where you don't have windows and such.
For me the problem with HDRIs is, that there is only one direction abd one for the light to come from. At least when I want a certain part of the HDRI to be my "centerpiece"... or am I missing something here?
The HDRI image background will have a fixed lighting direction because that's the whole point i guess, and they will have a narrow 'center', but you can rotate your camera with xyz freedom of movement to move the field of view to get the part of the panorama you want as your background, and then zoom-out/zoom-in to put your figure elsewhere in the image (i.e., put them further into the background vs further into the foreground).
I can 1000% recommend the free HDRI's of Agent Unawares: https://www.deviantart.com/agentunawares/gallery/64098035/freebies
Some more on CGAxis, although I haven't had the chance to try them out yet: https://free.cgaxis.com/product-category/hdri-2/
Era7 has some as well: https://cubebrush.co/era7
You can rotate your skydome. Or did I misunderstand the issue?
I use hdri a lot. Sometimes the ground does not work well for me..it looks pixilated. Othertimes the light can look a bit strange. Such as greenish when the hdri has a lot of grass.
I have a few favorites though that I like and use often.
Some offer HDRIs of the same environment taken at different times of day so the light comes from different directions.
My two cents. This is a simple example of how HDRIs change the texture. These are texture proof images of one of my WIPs. It is a detail of a wooden staff. These are DS Iray renders. The first is a neutral illumination only with scene lights. The second is only with HDRI lighting.
In the next ones, only with HDRI lighting and with HDRI + scene lighting.
I tend to render using an HRDI, but turning off the dome and sometimes the floor, but keeping the ground shadows on.. That allows me to get the effect AND rotate the dome using X, Y, OR Z to position the main light direction where I want it. Then you could use a background image in post or as a background plane if needed.
Well, there's the Daz 3D YouTube channel, and the one of the tutorial projects they tell you about when you first start Daz Studio for the first time shows you how to use HDRI.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYcG_i3b4-4
How can you pass up HDRI Haven?
Keep in mind that some hdris aren’t made with proper depth and will not light a scene properly. If you ever find the lighting strangely flat despite what looks to be a distinct sun in the background, that’s what’s going on.
Mind you, you can always add a spotlight to supplement the hdri, and it’s often useful to add s few lights to enhance the scene anyway.
Also don’t try to make hdris that produce proper lighting unless you have several crates of whiskey to console yourself. (Mutter)
Since HDRIs are often images from actual real life situations, the lighting can be provided from multiple directions, based on how emissive various objects in the HDRI picture may be. This can make for some pretty interesting lighting situations in some cases.
Working with HDRIs is often a trial and error thing, but they can be real timesavers. You should still master the other lighting techniques though!
I love sticking a suitable HDRI outside of a house model. If the sun angle and such is placed/rotated properly, you can get some pretty interesting lighting and outdoor views coming in through the windows. Again, trial and error.
And yeah, as takedo mentioned, https://hdrihaven.com has lots of Free HDRIs - they do accept donations to fund the cause of course, and there are also the other sites mentioned as well.
I tried used Sun-Sky and then HRDIs as a noob but then unsatisfied with the results, which were sort of same-same, I tried using the various add lights to a scene / lighting rigs bought in the DAZ Store and often combine them with Sun-Sky and like that method much better as I can get lighting that I like better but after a few renders they too are feeling same-same.
That said, I rarely will spend the hours & hours I need to fiddle with the lighting until I finally get something that I like. The one time that I actually did fiddle until I get the lighting I was after, it took me like dorking around for a week and many started and stopped renders (I was trying to copy lighting from an old 3DL lighting in an ad copy for a product in the DAZ Store).
Also, frustrating to me is I use products bought from the store like BOSS Portrait lights or Painter's Lights and they light a scene so brightly (most times not always) but when I try to add lights directly from the 'Create' menu for some reason they are not near as bright (because I usually forget that the lumens are cranked to crazy levels on some of those lights in those products).
Now I've pretty much stopped rendered unless I can think of a scene that is in some way interestingly lit & I'm willing to work on getting that lighting a few hours spread over multiple days to get it right. Often, the solution is changing me mind, not actually solving the original problem.
I tend to like volumetric foggy / rainy / cloudy scenes with multiple visible light sources but those take massive amounts of time to create and then render, especially when CPU rendering like I do.
i love lighting with HDRIs. they can take some tweaking--hours of it, sometimes, if you're really in finesse-it mode--but the results can be totally worth the time.
if you're just starting to get a handle on them:
in addition to adjusting lightsource location, light direction, and shadow placement via Dome, Y, X, and Z rotation in the Render Settings/Environment tab (as discussed above), the light level itself can be adjusted via the Environmental Intensity parameter setting.
and if you have photoshop, or another image editing tool that can process HDR files, you can adjust the tone/color balance of the scene lighting and background. just make sure you don't overwrite your original/base HDRI when you save.
it's amazing how much a few tweaks to an HDR can affect everything in a scene. :)
j
I’ve noticed some weird distortion in some of their HDRIs.
My favorite approach is to have an hdri set a little on the dim side and then spotlights to highlight the scene focus
A good resource for sure, but many of their items are not to my personal taste. I mostly use HDRI only for lighting and skies; perhaps some distant landscapes at most. I prefere to use props and figures for the actual scenery and the ground. Agent Unaware's items are perfect for that.
This is something that I will have to try out... thanks for the idea :)
I usually use mesh lights not spots, but I tend to do the same.
WIP. Maybe I should have turned off the emmision on the talisman, but I was shocked at how close it got without a single lamp in the scene. This is an 8K from coloud.blender.org
I hope you don't mind me offering an opinion but here goes: I find that with HDRI, the background has a certain lack of intensity and the 3D model has too much - it is too sharp, the edges are too defined and the contrast is too strong. I'm no artist nor photographer so I am not familiar with the correct terminology but the model doesn't look like it is part of the same scene. I really don't mean to cause offense, especially because I struggle with the same issues and perhaps it is just personal preference.
As an addendum to that comment, I notice that @PedroC (above) seems to use DOF in the images he has posted and that is what I tend to do too.
One other point about HDRI’s is that they provide reflections in reflective surfaces include eyes...
Ok so maybe a slightly silly question but can HDRI's be used in the same way with 3Delight rendering? ( I am assuming you are all talking about Iray renders at thish point) Yess I am stuck in the stone age lol
Yes! Check out IBL-Master by Parris!
https://www.daz3d.com/ibl-master-for-daz-studio
Thanks, is there any way to use them with out that though? Limmited budget :)