Possible to use dome with HDRI as texture but lit with another?

SnowSultan

This might be a weird question and easily answered, but I'm just not able to see a solution at the moment. Maybe it's the cats keeping me up at night.

Anyway, what I want to do is use a simple HDRI to light a scene but keep the dome invisble and use a physical skydome with a sky texture applied that does *not* emit light to act as a 360 degree background. I'm running into two problems though, both of which make sense of course: the physical skydome blocks the HDRI's light from entering the scene and the skydomes I have are not UV mapped to display HDRIs properly as sky textures (they warp any textures applied to them).

Does anyone have any possible solutions aside from rendering the scene twice and combining an empty scene with only a sky HDRI background with the actual scene with no background? Thanks in advance.

kenshaw011267

Get an hdri that you find pleasing and use that? 

You do know there is at least one site of free HDRI's you can use as a resource, right?

https://hdrihaven.com/

shaneseymourstudio

SnowSultan said:

This might be a weird question and easily answered, but I'm just not able to see a solution at the moment. Maybe it's the cats keeping me up at night.

Anyway, what I want to do is use a simple HDRI to light a scene but keep the dome invisble and use a physical skydome with a sky texture applied that does *not* emit light to act as a 360 degree background. I'm running into two problems though, both of which make sense of course: the physical skydome blocks the HDRI's light from entering the scene and the skydomes I have are not UV mapped to display HDRIs properly as sky textures (they warp any textures applied to them).

Does anyone have any possible solutions aside from rendering the scene twice and combining an empty scene with only a sky HDRI background with the actual scene with no background? Thanks in advance.

I've wondered about this as well. I have not found a way yet.

Fishtales

The image you want to use in the skydome can be turned into a mask and put in the Cutout channel which will allow the light from the Iray dome through. I have used that technique a few times.

WendyLuvsCatz

two renders combine in post 

hide dome png for lighting one

or use Octane render, you can use a texture environment there independent of the lighting

SnowSultan

Kenshaw: Yes, I'm actually a Patreon supporter of HDRI Haven and probably have about 200 HDRIs from various sources. My question was about using a combination of methods because I need to have a full 360 degree sky environment separate of the actual HDRI.

 

Fishtales: Hm, so you put the sky texture in the Cutout channel and the Diffuse? Couple things though, if it's a darker sky, won't that really affect the actual HDRI's lighting because so much of the mask will be dark?

 

Wendy: Yeah, that's the method I mentioned being the only other alternative. Probably going to go with that, I do a ton of postwork anyway.

 

WendyLuvsCatz

SnowSultan said:

Kenshaw: Yes, I'm actually a Patreon supporter of HDRI Haven and probably have about 200 HDRIs from various sources. My question was about using a combination of methods because I need to have a full 360 degree sky environment separate of the actual HDRI.

 

Fishtales: Hm, so you put the sky texture in the Cutout channel and the Diffuse? Couple things though, if it's a darker sky, won't that really affect the actual HDRI's lighting because so much of the mask will be dark?

 

Wendy: Yeah, that's the method I mentioned being the only other alternative. Probably going to go with that, I do a ton of postwork anyway.

 

yes missed that you had said that, it is in effect what Octane does but all in one go and iray could if they wanted to code it in

after all you can do a background it would just need a means to map that background off a spherical map to coincide with camera rotation, Hitfilm express can even do it.

Sven Dullah

WendyLuvsCatz said:

SnowSultan said:

Kenshaw: Yes, I'm actually a Patreon supporter of HDRI Haven and probably have about 200 HDRIs from various sources. My question was about using a combination of methods because I need to have a full 360 degree sky environment separate of the actual HDRI.

 

Fishtales: Hm, so you put the sky texture in the Cutout channel and the Diffuse? Couple things though, if it's a darker sky, won't that really affect the actual HDRI's lighting because so much of the mask will be dark?

 

Wendy: Yeah, that's the method I mentioned being the only other alternative. Probably going to go with that, I do a ton of postwork anyway.

 

yes missed that you had said that, it is in effect what Octane does but all in one go and iray could if they wanted to code it in

after all you can do a background it would just need a means to map that background off a spherical map to coincide with camera rotation, Hitfilm express can even do it.

...and scripted 3Delight can do it. With aweEnvironment you can  use the surface tiling parameters to adjust the HDRI/skydome texture. Load two environments, set one to be visible to camera and the other to provide light.

Catherine3678ab

There is this: https://www.daz3d.com/iray-worlds-skydome

SnowSultan

I'll wishlist that Catherine, thanks. It's been at $2.99 before, so I can wait. Least I know that uses HDRIs properly, but I will just do the two render solution anyway. Just wasn't sure if there was something I was missing or a product that did what I was asking about.