Post here your HDRI's

[flingster]

not free but supposed to be very good.

http://www.realtexture.com/hdri1.html

[flingster]

jeez man youre a walking hdr resource...all very useful.
please post this thread into the resources one at the top of the c4d forum.:beer:

[Kirl]

Great stuff man, thanks a ton...! :thumbsup:

[Shademaster]

K guys, posted it here:

- http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&postid=720941#post720941

Please continue posting there :)

[Shademaster]

Does it end here?
http://www.3dtv.nl/pix_members/ohno.jpg

Ehm....anyone knows where to get tennisball size ballbearings?! Christmass balls are a bit too fragile for my big lumpy hands :sad:

[flingster]

3 inch ball bearing...by the sounds of it.
http://www.debevec.org/HDRShop/main-pages/faq.html

[That Adrian Guy]

Those links you sent... Does R8 support HDRI files now?

[Shademaster]

Yep hdr files are supported in 8.1, not 8.001 or 8.012.... You'll have to put the hdr in your sky object in the luminant channel.
:)

[That Adrian Guy]

actually... I think XP opened it on its own, and I made it into a bmp.

It appears to work like a champ still... unless I lost some HDRI info.

[AdamT]

How about 12" steel balls? http://www.outdoordecor.com/cgi-local/SoftCart.exe/online-store/scstore/p-RI712-S.html?L+scstore+bxmb3541Google-Decor-GazingGlobesff670467+1058693988

They also have smaller (and cheaper) sizes.

[JIII]

could you really make an HDRI with just a camera and that kind of ball? I mean how would you get it into your computer with out losing all the extra HDRI info?

[AdamT]

Originally posted by JIII
could you really make an HDRI with just a camera and that kind of ball? I mean how would you get it into your computer with out losing all the extra HDRI info?

You still have to use multiple exposures and a program that can combine them into an HDRI. The advantage to using a reflective sphere is that you can get a 360 degree image with one snap, as opposed to having to stitch together multiple frames of multiple exposures to make panoramic images into an HDRI.

[Shademaster]

Yup, just like Adam said.
http://217.121.248.139/maxforums/ballbearing_example.gif
But there are many pitfalls in creating those images, your camera and ball have to be perfectly fixed, if they aren't it will show up immediatly. There is also no movement allowed when creating hdr's from a probe. The trick with hdr's is that the multiple exposures capture the real light more precise. Normal RGB has 8 bit per channel, that means 0-100% brightness. HDRI has 32 bit per channel with floating point (just read that somewhere :shrug: ), this means your brightness valuas can go up from 0-10000%!

When shooting, you make photo's at exponential exposure levels:
1-1024 sec.
1- 512 sec.
1- 256 sec.
1- 128 sec.
1- 64 sec.
1- 32 sec.
and so on.
Then you put this image sequence in Photoshop and align them so that in each and every image the ball is in the exact same place, this has to be pixel perfect or it ill show. Then cut out the images you shot so that the border of the ball will be exactly at the border of the image (place your images in multiple layers and use rulers). Save them and name them after the exposure setting, import them to hdrshop. Then set your gamma at something like 3 for good contrast values (I found out that if you set gamma to 2.2 and not on 3 the contrast between the high dynamic range areas and low dynamic range areas become washed out, less contrast between ehm so less highlights in your render.) , now hit calculate and generate image and save ehm.
Then open the Advanced render plugin called HDRprobe convert and convert your hdr file to a spherical map.
Put the newly created file in the luminance channel in Cinema and set it to multiply and the brightness on something like 400. This is neccesary because this will give a way nicer effect on the brighter spots of the image.

You can decrease, increase the contrast by fiddling with the Gamma settings in hdrshop.

That's what I learned from fiddling with it for hours (while my pc was rendering :D ) . If you do it any different it will probably go wrong, stuff like this is hypersensitive to anything you do wrong or forget....

The hdr I made you see in the render is just done with a big (now broken) christmass ball and a normal 3 megapixel camera...
Hope that helped.

p.s.: You can try the panorama creation method out in your 3d software too! Just put a 100% reflective sphere in your scene, render it and put it in Probe convert in advanced render!
:)

[Shademaster]

How about 12" steel balls? http://www.outdoordecor.com/cgi-loc...0467+1058693988

12 frigging inch?! :eek: Dood! I have never seen ball like that! Thanks for the link :) .
Big balls are great for outdoor scenes since you can photograph them from greater distances with a lesser zoomlens. Small ones are perfect for indoor scenes since they obstruct the view less.

hey cool! these ones float in water!! :buttrock:

Thanks a lot for the links man!
:)

[flingster]

its not size that counts really...its the quality of its surface.

also can't you put the hdr file into the colour channel?

That Adrian Guy: sorry but converting it will lose the data as far as i'm aware...i might be wrong though.

[Halogen]

its not size that counts really...its the quality of its surface.

True, because i have an approximately 40mm steel ball baring that has small bits of corrosion on it and rust, and it doesnt really produce good results. Oh welll, thanks for all the links, your a champion!

[AdamT]

Originally posted by flingster
its not size that counts really...its the quality of its surface.


Not necessarily, since what you're really trying to collect is the light intensity information rather than a great photo background. If you also want to use the scene as a background I would shoot a real panoramic sequence and use that as the BG. Even with a 5 megapixel camera the probe image will be too low-rez to look good as a background unless you blur the hell out of it--in which case surface abnormalities won't matter.

The main advantage of the big ball is that you can move the camera further back, so the camera (and the photographer) obscures less of the image.

[Shademaster]

This is true since hdr's are mostly used for reflections and lighting data. They can't really function as a 360 panorama since you'll see nast pixels. This means the background almost always needs a bit of DOF to make it look believable, and even then it's not everything. HDRI is still best used in composoting not for pano's...

[flingster]

surely youre capturing reflective data...therefore the better the surface the better your data?
:eek:

[Shademaster]

Yes, but the reflective data doesn't have to be spot free, you absolutely won't notice. I made a hdr file of 1024x1200 and a hdr file of 3000x3200, and you don't notice the difference, even after putting both renders in photoshop over each other and playing wit the opacity didn't bring up any difference. I got some nasty spots on my christmass ball (had some nasty spots) and you don't see them in your reflections as well. If I where you I'd just go out and shoot some pictures of that rusty ball, it doesn't matter at all, as long as it shines....

[AdamT]

It was interesting that in the Bloki (sp?) challenge, the instructions said that you actually get a better lighting/reflection effect with a lower resolution HDRI. I'm not sure why that would be, but I'm sure there must be some truth to it.

[flingster]

alrighty i stand corrected...thanks i always assumed you wanted quality reflections..but i guess the method of composing them together also affects your final output anyway.:shrug:

[Shademaster]

A bit OT but still interesting:

http://www.3dtv.nl/pix_members/watertest.jpg

This was rendered without radiosity, without lights and without AA and just the standard water shader on a plane. Look at how realistic it looks!! Reflections are so much realer with hdri.

Here is the qt movie (3mb):
(need 6)
http://www.shademaster.nl/movies/watertest(qt6).mov

And here is the divx movie (1mb):
http://www.shademaster.nl/movies/watertest(divx).avi

[ThirdEye]

Great result! :thumbsup: :thumbsup:

[brammelo]

ShadeMaster: nou moe!

[Shademaster]

Whe meet again :beer:

The water shader you see is just the standard water shader with 90% reflectance and 85% transparency with 1.333 refraction and my backyard HDR in the enironment channel at 300% strenght adn on multiply.

Piece a cake. :)

[Wolf S]

http://www.sachform.de/images/b02.jpg
Sachform HDRI-Base (http://www.sachform.de)
not free but :thumbsup: :buttrock:

[Shademaster]

Thanks for that one Wolf!

I uploaded the scene file of the Water animation here (contains seperate hdr file so is usable in other hdri renders too):

http://www.pietertje.nl/shademaster/WaterC4d.zip

You may use this commercially but not sell the file itself. Just lemme know if you made something cool wih it :)

[JIII]

I guess its true there are no great reflections only great environments.

Nice work man uber innovative.

[flingster]

shademaster : thks for file...will take a look...excellent result btw

[AdamT]

Here's a render using my first ever home-made HDRI.
http://bellsouthpwp.net/A/d/AdamTrachtenberg/Park_HDRI2.jpg

I used a 12" stainless steel sphere and HDRIShop.

And here's the HDRI
http://bellsouthpwp.net/A/d/AdamTrachtenberg/Pocket_Park2.zip

Feel free to use it for whatever you want.

[flingster]

adamt: you clever little geezer.....thanks for sharing the file bud....love the anvil render...why not go with something like that for your new logo...maybe name as relief on side of anvil...obvious but clear, clean, crisp....my personal opinion is keep it simple...then you can transfer it easily to all headed paper, packaging, cards, faxes etc etc....and still have 3dversion of same logo for all colour promotional material like websites and brochures....anyways thanks again.
:thumbsup:

[That Adrian Guy]

Excellent thread.

The water shader test is great!

AdamT: Nice one, bro!

[Shademaster]

Hey AdamT! Way to go, this one is shot in a very nice location! Thank you so much for sharing. :)

May I ask what kind of Gamma value you used for this one? I used gamma 3 and at 400% multiply in the luminance channel to get a good effect. I am still figuring that out...

I am planning on making all the homemade HDRI's available for free download on my server (which will be up next week), that way no one has to worry about hosting and they will be up permanently, great idea or not?

Thank you all for the positive feedback on the water test :D

:)

[JIII]

I loved the water thing shade here is what I made with it lol.

http://www.metafex.net/~j3/HRDI.jpg



Believe it or not it is utilizing the water shader.

[Shademaster]

Hey wow! That looks figgin cool :beer: that's a different kind of sphere than the usual reflecting one :D

[AdamT]

Hi Shademaster,

I used a calibrated camera curve for the gamma. I also tried Gamma 3, but it came out a little too contrasty. I found the key is to pick a good exposure in the HDRShop editor window and then do an Edit-->Pixels-->Set to Current Exposure before saving.

That would be cool if you would host the HDRs on your site.

[Shademaster]

Thanks Adam,

Now I got that exposure trick! You can sort of 'freeze' the exposure then so it outputs to cinema just like that! Thanks a lot :) , that was the only quirk I had in my method, I had to increase the brightness a lot in Cinema, now I don't have to anymore, thanks :)

[Shademaster]

Did a quick ball test with the water shader and a thinking particles experiment (trying to let them stick to an object)

http://www.3dtv.nl/pix_members/wetball400.jpg

Some Dof in it, HDR sky and last but not least : the Bokeh effect :buttrock:

This perfectly proves you don't need any artistic talent at all to make great looking pictures :p

You can see the 1600 and 1024 version here:

http://www.shademaster.nl/pics/wetball1600.jpg/
http://www.shademaster.nl/pics/wetball1024.jpg/

[flingster]

very very nice result....been playing about with your water file shademaster you got some good result there bud...
one thing i've also been trying is a trick i saw in another thread about using proximal in displacement and luminance channels to get a difference in water closer to the object....not having result i want but only had ten mins spare...

[pupii]

Excellent thread.
Shademaster and Adam stuffs wery cool.
more, more...

[Peoples]

I agree w/ pupii :beer:

Great stuff - let's see some more home-made HDRI's!! I'd love to give it a try but I'll have to wait for that mac version of hdrShop:annoyed:

Btw - I some of you decide to make some HDR's - it would be cool to have a higher res jpeg of the same environment for the background. I understand that lower res hdr's give adequate lightning information while you can/should put a highres jpeg on the bg when needed...

[Halogen]

Hey, im like, a bit dislexic (lol j/k) and i am not good at making my own hdri's. I have a steel ball (real small, about 40mm?), i have a digi camera that allows the adjustment of f-stops, i have hdri shop, i have a tripod etc. I was wondering in lamens terms, how do you create the hdri? I mean, i read somewhere you take shots of the same image at diff f-stops, then rotate (around the ball) 90 degrees then do the same, and import it into hdri shop or something like that. I tried it and it didnt turn out well. Since you guys have already made them before, can you simplify it alot? If you could, i would appreciate it. I didnt quite get the explaination on the first page :rolleyes:

[knight42]

For Info, I have a Casio QV4000 digital camera which has a function to automatically shoot 3 or 5 frames with different exposures, presumably other cameras might too. I think you can set how different each exposure is too. I haven't tried it yet as I don't have steel balls (ahahaha) but I will try it some time.

J

[Shademaster]

Thanks a lot guys :) , just sharing what I learned...

@Halogen,

The HDR creation procedure is much simpler:

You don't neccesarilly need to make a 90 degree set of foto's, that will only get you in trouble with creating the hdr's and the effect is almost unnoticable in your reflections.

What you need to do is make many photo's with variable shutter speeds, not f-stop thingies (I was totally lost when they talked about f-stop incremations) :) . When you made all the photo's import them into hdrshop (name them after you shutterspeeds, so for 1-1000 second name it 1000.jpg or something) and hit calculate. Then Save ass and done ye are.

This is the simpler explanation, for a more difficult one check older posts.

About the steel ball, 40 mm should be enough if you can zoom in on it (no digital zoom!!!) far enough so it's fullscreen.

The amount of photo's you take always has to be more than 2, one with high shutterspeed and one with low shutterspeed.

Hope that helped!

:)

[Halogen]

It helped a heaps, i might go and try it tonight, thanks for that! Might be having more home made HDRI's soon ;)

Oh yea, if any of you know Australian companies who provide huge steel balls (like the one AdamT mentioned) it would be extremely helpful for me. I doubt there is but if so, i would be grateful if you would share. Thanks Shademaster, you are a champion :)

[Peoples]

I just happened to notice today out on the town - we have a spot here in Helsinki near the Masa-Yards ship harbour where they have these huge crome balls on the ground - 50-70cm wide - and they have them at least in 3 different spots, don't have a clue what they are there for...? Maybe some environmental art thingy or something - but I think they'd be great for some serious hdri shooting... Now if I just had a digi-cam and hdrShop......:scream:

[AdamT]

For Mac users there's a program called PhotoSphere that's supposed to be good for making HDRIs.

[Shademaster]

Okay everyone my site is online at long last, and damn it's quick!!

For everyone who liked my Wet Ball image, you can download the complete scene here:

http://www.shademaster.nl

If anyone would like to have their HDRI files/scenes hosted just drop me a line!

:)

[Cartesius]

Thanks for the downloads, Shademaster! And you're right, that site is *very* fast -- I downloaded "BackyardHDRI.zip" (7MB) in 11 seconds :)

/Anders Kjellberg

[Shademaster]

AdamT, is it okay if I put your file on my server with your name with it and all? Is that okay by you?

@Cartesius

Wow 11 seconds, that's almost 900 kb/sec!! This server is very fast, I am still amazed by it :D And boy oh boy is it big too, I plan on putting tons of free-stuff on it :)

[flingster]

heh nice site and quick shademaster...looking forward to things to come.

side note how about preview images for your gallery part!

[AdamT]

Hi Shademaster,

Your site looks cool--and it *is* fast! Definitely feel free to host the HDRI. Hopefully I'll have time to do another one this weekend.

[Shademaster]

Thanks Adam and Flingster, I put your file there.

I am currently working on the layout so you know what you click :)

[Shademaster]

Why a lower res HDR file works better

I think I got a theory for that:

With radiosity calculations there are a number of rays calculated that are emitted from the camera, each ray hits an object of your scene and then (most of them) get bounced towards the hdr sky object. This information is calculated backwards. Since the sky object is a luminant object it will light the scene with it's texture.

Now what I think happens is that when you have a hdr with a lot of pixels (like 3000x4000) there are less rays available per pixel of the hdr. This means that some rays will hit 'unimportant' pixels, if you have a lowres hdr file there is a bigger chance a ray will hit an area that is 'interesting' (like a sun or a big green area of grass) since there are more rays per pixel available. What I am trying to say is that if your hdr is very hires, you need a lot of rays to profficiently 'capture' the hdr's light.

So if you have a low res hdr your renders will have less artifacts with the same radiosity settings as with a highres hdr! I tested it and it worked! So the best scene setup would be:

Sky object with highres HDR with compositing tag: seen by GI unchecked

Second Sky object with lowres HDR with compositing tag: seen by camera, seen by rays unchecked and seen by GI checked

This way you'll have hires HDR reflections and a lowres GI hdr with less artifacts in your render.

My 2 cents...

:)

[fred_bock]

Great, great thread !!

thx Shademaster to share knoledge as important as this !!!
:beer:

pitty that the thread is located on a especific software forum ...
i think that this is interesting to other users ... should show this on other users :beer:

there is some stuff that are not very clear to me ... but i need to pay more atention to this !! but great !! thx again !!:beer:

[roguenroll]

I had collected a few links for my work in Lightwave, I think most you already have , but if there one or two, ity might be worth updating your 1st post.

http://www.fmotion.net/hdri.htm


this is a simple one, but the Lightwave guys liked itr, and made
it on the Newtek Gallery site.

http://www.fmotion.net/gallery/nut_boltcol.jpg

[scotttygett]

Just a quick note on making extra exposures. I haven't actually made any camera HDRI's, though LightWave outputs a few kinds of HDRI formats (tiflogluv, etc) that I have used. Anyway, your average photograph has ten "zones" of doubling light value, so if you take one exposure at 1/60th, you would take another at 1/4000th, and that should cover you for about fifteen zones. A one second exposure would give you shadow detail for 20 zones, but that would contribute very little in terms of providing lighting info for radiosity.

A neutral density filter with a lens shade is probably worth its weight in gold with camera HDRI, but most HDRI shots that I've seen used daylight, so all that will be exposed with an ND filter is the disk of the sun. One should probably be able to emulate that by rendering an image in LightWave or another App with a luminous disk added to a front-projected HDRI.


ALSO:
Plugging in "HDRI" on CGTalk's search engine should bring up a few discussion threads that may not have been listed here.

[roblap]

I saw the word FREE and HDRI used in the same sentence, but unless I missed something, it's all about the image maps. Is there a FREE (or close to it) application that can render images using HDR? I've been using C4D CE edition for a while but it lacks radiosity. Do I really have to spring for a higher-end package to get radiosity renders?

Thanks
Rob

[Erufailon]

Is there a FREE (or close to it) application that can render images using HDR?

Sure, Blender+ yafray.
As of 2.32 blender can render with yafray directly and with the new bf-blender cvs version you can add a hdr image as world background and have yafray render that.

[szolnokil]

Hello,
does anyone know of an app. that could make an HDRI image from an image sequence (which was taken with different exposure settings) besides of MKHDR or HDRSHOP?
My only problem with those 2 apps is that they cannot be used for commercial purposes.

Thanks,
szolnokil

[RJay]

I've serched the net but can't find what I want but I saw this useful thread so I'll post here and see if anyone can help.

Although I have some useful HDRI's I want to create my own within my 3-D package. What I mean is setup a scene (in this case an Accident and Emergency waiting room) and then render exposures and composite them to make a HDRI that will be used in a specific shot. It would be impossible to do in a real AnE as there are always people moving in and around.

Does anyone have any experience of doing something similar? What settings did they use cam focals, how did they simulate exposures etc?

I'm using Carrara Studio3 but thats not really important as I would imagine you could do the same in any package.

[scotttygett]

LightWave with a Worley plug-in called "Environ" in the Polk collection creates a spherical map render.

I don't own it, but if it weren't able to render directly to one of the HDRI range image fomats, you could composite a few together in a Scene file using front projected cards, and recording to logluv or one of the other hdri formats supported.

I suppose you're asking if you should have 10 cards or just 3? The one HDRI compositing series I saw had half of the exposures basically the sun's disk. You can probably crank up the ambient/luminosity setting for your highest shadow detail shot, or have it as a spare. The only place where shadows are black is supposed to be the moon.

I didn't realize HDRI Shop wasn't comercial, thanks for the heads-up.
:thumbsup:

[acarvalho]

hi folks...

(this is my first post in the cgtalk, ...)

somebody know if a sony p32 can capture images to put in the hdrshop e create a map hdri????

thanks...

[AdamT]

Originally posted by acarvalho
hi folks...

(this is my first post in the cgtalk, ...)

somebody know if a sony p32 can capture images to put in the hdrshop e create a map hdri????

thanks...
I don't think the P32 has enough controls to take the requisite exposures. Basically you need full manual control of shutter speed, aperture, and white balance. Focus lock is helpful too but not necessary if there's an infinity setting.

[ariander]

Here is a render with a HDRI image I made today.
I allso took some pictures to use as background for composites.

http://www.ariander.com/files/forumposts/smalroad_test.jpg

Get the files here. (http://www.ariander.com/files/forumposts/smal_road_HDRI.zip) (4.5 mb)
This HDRI is not that great, but its free :)
Would be cool to see a car or something on that road ;)

[AdamT]

Looks excellent! :thumbsup:

[Ric535]

Thanks for supplying the scene :thumbsup:

[RusMan]

NIce scene, but is there any way to make that plane not look green, and be seemless with the HDRI?

[RusMan]

Would be cool to see a car or something on that road

I made a quick test, but somehow I can't upload images to my hosting:hmm: :cry: , so I'll post a small attachment and post a bigger version when everything gets worked out.:thumbsup:

[ariander]

Originally posted by RusMan
NIce scene, but is there any way to make that plane not look green, and be seemless with the HDRI?

The road is front projected on a plane and naturaly it will get darker than the background, because the texture is in the colour-chanel in order to recieve shadows. You may want to render a seperate shadow-pass on a white background and composite it i photoshop etc.
There may be other solutions to this allso.

Nice car btw! :applause:

[paulselhi]

Sorry if it's all ready been mentioned but terragen the landscape program has a free plugin which allows you to save images as hdri format

Couple this with the pano script to get the 6 images needed for a lightproble and you have a quick and free hdri maker

You need to use the sitch to cross free program to get the images aligned then something like hdri shop to generate the probes ( though does not C4D have a converter in advanced render taht will negate the need for the hdri shop step and handles to cross format ?)

[LeeGriggs]

does anyone know where I can download a plugin that will let me edit hdri images?

someone told me they use it, but havent given me a link to it :sad:

[SimonReeves]

hdr shopeeee

http://www.debevec.org/HDRShop/

[LeeGriggs]

sorry, I meant for photoshopeeeee

[SimonReeves]

oh, well you can kind of edit them from hdr shop to photoshop[eee] but you cant do much, overwise it'll mess it up in a bad way

[rbf229]

These arn't free but they look nice.
http://www.doschdesign.com/products/hdri/

[Aros]

http://www.cgaros.com/gallery/candle/1.jpg
http://www.cgaros.com/gallery/marble/final.jpg

:)

[flingster]

http://athens.ict.usc.edu/FiatLux/mkhdr/
try this.

[Bl4ck_Eagl3]

Well im not quite sure if it fits in the HDRI maps category but i thought it might be useful. It has some neat textures with VERY high resolutions. The skies are amazing :D
Cheers
http://www.mayang.com/textures/

[AidanGibbons]

Hey,

I have a Casio QVR-40 4MB camera. Unfortunately ive just found out that while it does have a manual function, you cant set f-stop. If there any software or perhaps photoshop methods out there that allows you to change the levels of one HDRI picture so you end up with 10 pictures of varying exposures?

[AdamT]

Hey,

I have a Casio QVR-40 4MB camera. Unfortunately ive just found out that while it does have a manual function, you cant set f-stop. If there any software or perhaps photoshop methods out there that allows you to change the levels of one HDRI picture so you end up with 10 pictures of varying exposures?No, you can't create dynamic range that doesn't exist.

[rizon]

bounced into this through vray
http://www.aversis.be/hdri/

[louismac44]

Hi all great thred,
\I have followed all the advice in this section to the bone But i canot get my compiled hdri
exported with a good exposer level (its way to dark)! . I have read that you can use pixels/scale to exposer level. Basicly im lost .I have taken my images imported them into hdrshop, Then ajusted the gamma to 3 and hit calculate, The image looks ok but wheb i ajust the exposer (view / exposer +) looks good till i hit export as hdr radiance file . Then i open the hdr file and its almost black Please help or put me out of my missery

Louis

[mt_sabao]

Hei, louismac44, i´ve run into the same problem while doing my first hdri.Check this thread here:
http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?t=173752&highlight=hdri

Hope it helps.

[louismac44]

hi, it looks ok to me, please can you tell me tje prosess you used to achive this result mate? thanks bit thick will need to know from scratch

[Mike Nuts]

Two free high quality HRDI maps for download at: http://www.3dvalley.com/textures.shtml donated by www.HDRImaps.com (http://www.HDRImaps.com)

Once you go HDRI...

[shakes]

thanks for that Mike- they look good..you can never have enough!
p.s your squirrel looks excellent so far.

[CGTalk Moderation]

This thread has been automatically closed as it remained inactive for 12 months. If you wish to continue the discussion, please create a new thread in the appropriate forum.