Hi. I came up with the idea of making studio-lighting setups with 3ds max and render them into HDRI. I figured out how to do it, and here is the result. There is a site which i cannot remember right now that sell commercial-quality HDRIs similar to these, but they aren’t free :P. Resolution is 2000x2000 for the probe image and 2000x1000 for the latitude/longitude map.
I had to post them separately, 'cause CGtalk wouldn’t let me upload the zip containing both of them.
here is an image rendered with this map. 1 skylight, final gather samples:1000 min samples per pixel:1 max:16 rendered with 3ds max 7 -mental ray. this map used as environment AND as projector map for the skylight. as you can see, even some caustics show up even if they wre trned OFF. redner time: 2:41:05 @ 3200 X 2400 in P4 @ 1.5Ghz.
This HDRI is similar in concept to these, but FREE. I’m planing to make more.
Wow! Thank you for your time and effort! I’m sure many have thought of doing this, but just never took the time! What a great contribution to CGTalk. Not many would think to post and give their work for free. Thanks again!
-Brian H.
thank you very much for your effort… I cant download the zips though 
has anyone else experienced probs? Otherwise… could you try to upload them again, please?
rodrigogua…I would like to thank you for attempting to make HDRIs however you could save these a jpg and save space and have the same results. If you look at the image in the the hdr setup you will see you only have one little spike in the graph. This is not hdr it is an ldr image saved as hdr. To properly get an HDR image you will need to use a renderer that properly supports the Unclamped colors gbuffer channel as well as set your white materials to values above 1.0.
-Eric
Thanks for letting us view the files, but I can’t get either to work.
I thought the probe file was because it was missing the .hdr extension so I added that and it still wouldn’t work. Then the warped file comes through corrupt.
What am I doing wrong
very nice map…too bad 3dsmax cannot output 64bit++ images 
I tried myself to make a HDRI-map but when i rendered it sucked.
i will try to make a synthetic HDRI 
soon in LW
Simple and amazing idea, man. I started a thread, Car studio lighting recepies and I linked your thread, hope that doesn’t bother you.
Do you blur your self-made HDRI or you just use it plain&simple ?
And the ground-plane, is it just simple plane or it’s like a studio (walls) ?
Cool idea, again ! 
@ PiXeL_MoNKeY: Thanks for the comment. at the time when i made this map, it was of no knowledg to me that 3ds max can’t render 64 bit images. nevertheless, this map should be useful due to its nature, even if all the lights will appear to have the same intensity. the output of all maps were set at a value much higher than one, i beleive that the less bright one was set at 2.5.
@ DodoPAN: thanks for the support! i really don’t mind you linking to this thread, that’s what i published this map for. the ground is a simple ground plane, no walls.
If you render at least three images that simulate different exposures then you can create an hdr image from that. That’s the way you do it when you take the images with a camera. It could work the same in the computer.
You can use HDRshop to assemble the images and it will create the hdr map for you. They have tutorials on their website as well.
Just render the ldr images (I would use tiff so as to not have compression) and just import them into hdrshop. I’m sure you could figure the rest out from there.
i was FINALLY able to make them work!!! as PiXeL_MoNKeY had previously pointed out, that HDR map was actually an ordinary LDR image. now, though, and thanks to MR 3.4 (wich ships with max 8) that outputs 32-bit, unclamped images, i was able to output a true HDR map.
i am planning to write a tutorial on how to do them so that this gets more general and we can all contribute. i will tell you this for now: the panorama exporter CANNOT output 32-but images, even if you set the renderer to do so!!
well, enough babbling here is the .zip file inlcuding both probe and latitude/longitude maps (58.2 Kb)
All you need to do to make a spherical map is use the WrapAround (lume) Lens Shader. Place it in Renderer > Camera Shaders > Lens when MR is active. To get it to map properly you need to use a 2:1 (image:pixel aspect ratio), ie 640x320. This generates a panoramic image that will peoperly map spherically as an environment or reflection map.
Hope this helps,
-Eric
Great HDR maps!!! Hopefully more people will provide the community with these awesome resources!!
-Greg
thanks wilgory!! i am writing a tutorial on how to create them so hopefully more people will be able to provide their own setups
