DIY Iray HDRI using DAZ Studio renders

Melissa Conway

Software: DAZ Studio Beta, Photomatix Pro

The new spherical lens in the beta is awesome, and rendering a panoramic 360-degree scene with it is easy, but plugging the finished render back into the iray environment map produces a washed-out HDRI, because the render itself isn’t HDR. I came up with a solution using Photomatix, which is software that merges photos with different exposures to create HDRs.

My goal was to reduce the overall size of an outdoor scene by creating a far mountains, hills, and trees landscape HDRI for background. I used the mountain prop from Dry Mud Desert, TerraDome 3, Skies of iRadiance, and a pine tree by Dinoraul with Ultrascatter to create the scene.

With your scene loaded in DAZ Studio Beta, click Create, choose New Camera, name it and choose Accept. In the Scene pane, select the new camera. In the Parameters pane, change X and Z Translate to zero, change X, Y, and Z Rotate to zero. Set Y Translate to your character’s eye-view (approximately 170) or higher/lower depending on what viewpoint you need. Click on Lens, under Lens Distortion Type, choose spherical.

You will need 3 .jpg renders, one light, one medium, and one dark to combine in Photomatix to create an HDR.

In the DAZ Studio Render Settings pane, under Editor tab, Engine, use NVIDIA Iray. Click General. I’m not sure whether it makes a difference with the spherical lens, but I used a 16:9 ratio. With Constrain Proportions (Global) On, change Pixel Size (Global) W: to 10,000. Under Image Name, type “HDRI_light” and change the dropdown to .jpg. Click Tone Mapping. Under Exposure Value, change the setting to 11 and click the Render button. For the second render, change Exposure Value to 13 and name it HDRI_medium. Change Exposure Value to 15 for the third render, and name it HDRI_dark.

In Photomatix, under Workflow Shortcuts, click the Load Bracketed Photos button. In the popup, browse to your saved renders, select all three and click open, then click ok. As they load, a message that the software couldn’t find exposure information will show, and then you will see the Setting of Exposure Values panel. In the EV column, set exposure for HDRI_light to +2.00, HDRI_medium to 0.00, and HDRI_dark to -2.00. Click ok. In the Merge to HDR Options panel, check the Align Source Images and Crop Aligned Images boxes. Click the Align & Merge to HDR button. (Don't panic at the seemingly oversaturated final image! This is normal.) Click Save Final Image, navigate to where you’d like to save it, name it under File Name, and under Save as Type, choose .hdr <Radiance RGBE>.  

Start a new scene in DAZ Studio. In my case, I already had the Skies of iRadiance HDRI loaded, so I just used those render settings, but replaced the environment map.

In the Render Settings pane under Environment, click on the little thumbnail under Environment Map. Choose Browse, navigate to your saved .hdr file, and open.

Hope this was useful.

[email protected]

Very clear and helpful tutorial. Thank you, it should be very helpful for visual novvels and comics.

Richard Haseltine

You can also use the Cnavasses feature (in the Advanced tab of Render Settings) to make a single Beauty Pass render which will be saved as .exr in a render name_canvasses subfolder when you save the render.

Melissa Conway

 Hahaha, once again I stepped in with a workaround where none was necessary. Beauty Pass render = easy button! Thanks for the heads-up Richard. I suppose this info was available somewhere obvious, but I missed it...

Richard Haseltine said:

You can also use the Cnavasses feature (in the Advanced tab of Render Settings) to make a single Beauty Pass render which will be saved as .exr in a render name_canvasses subfolder when you save the render.

 

Melissa Conway

Richard, if you see this, can you tell me where to find specific instructions for producing a Beauty Pass render to use as an HDRI? I went to Render Settings Advanced tab, Canvasses tab, checked the Canvasses box, clicked the plus button and selected Beauty. After I rendered, I got two files, one a .jpg of the scene that appears to be identical to my "medium" render as described above, and the other was an .exr PTGui viewer image (I own the PTGui software) that appears pure white in my iray viewport, and pure black in the PTGui viewer. Thanks for any info you can provide.

nemesis10

http://snowsultan.deviantart.com/art/Iray-Canvas-Tutorial-565641976

Melissa Conway

Ah, Snow Sultan makes excellent tutorials! Thanks for the link Nemesis. I'll check it out. Canvasses seems like a useful feature, but TBH I will probably keep using the method I devised for HDRI use. 

mavante

Melissa Conway said:

Software: DAZ Studio Beta, Photomatix Pro

The new spherical lens in the beta is awesome, and rendering a panoramic 360-degree scene with it is easy, but plugging the finished render back into the iray environment map produces a washed-out HDRI, because the render itself isn’t HDR. I came up with a solution using Photomatix, which is software that merges photos with different exposures to create HDRs.

My goal was to reduce the overall size of an outdoor scene by creating a far mountains, hills, and trees landscape HDRI for background. I used the mountain prop from Dry Mud Desert, TerraDome 3, Skies of iRadiance, and a pine tree by Dinoraul with Ultrascatter to create the scene.

With your scene loaded in DAZ Studio Beta, click Create, choose New Camera, name it and choose Accept. In the Scene pane, select the new camera. In the Parameters pane, change X and Z Translate to zero, change X, Y, and Z Rotate to zero. Set Y Translate to your character’s eye-view (approximately 170) or higher/lower depending on what viewpoint you need. Click on Lens, under Lens Distortion Type, choose spherical.

You will need 3 .jpg renders, one light, one medium, and one dark to combine in Photomatix to create an HDR.

In the DAZ Studio Render Settings pane, under Editor tab, Engine, use NVIDIA Iray. Click General. I’m not sure whether it makes a difference with the spherical lens, but I used a 16:9 ratio. With Constrain Proportions (Global) On, change Pixel Size (Global) W: to 10,000. Under Image Name, type “HDRI_light” and change the dropdown to .jpg. Click Tone Mapping. Under Exposure Value, change the setting to 11 and click the Render button. For the second render, change Exposure Value to 13 and name it HDRI_medium. Change Exposure Value to 15 for the third render, and name it HDRI_dark.

In Photomatix, under Workflow Shortcuts, click the Load Bracketed Photos button. In the popup, browse to your saved renders, select all three and click open, then click ok. As they load, a message that the software couldn’t find exposure information will show, and then you will see the Setting of Exposure Values panel. In the EV column, set exposure for HDRI_light to +2.00, HDRI_medium to 0.00, and HDRI_dark to -2.00. Click ok. In the Merge to HDR Options panel, check the Align Source Images and Crop Aligned Images boxes. Click the Align & Merge to HDR button. (Don't panic at the seemingly oversaturated final image! This is normal.) Click Save Final Image, navigate to where you’d like to save it, name it under File Name, and under Save as Type, choose .hdr <Radiance RGBE>.  

Start a new scene in DAZ Studio. In my case, I already had the Skies of iRadiance HDRI loaded, so I just used those render settings, but replaced the environment map.

In the Render Settings pane under Environment, click on the little thumbnail under Environment Map. Choose Browse, navigate to your saved .hdr file, and open.

Hope this was useful.

Well, it was very useful indeed for me! Thank you so much for your lucid step-by-step instructions.

It's a pity that the Beauty Canvas issue was never resolved in any meaningful way for how to use that to create an HDRI. I just got Photomatix for Mac, and have zero (so far) experience with it. Do you know whether the same thing now can be accomplished in Photoshop. I think I saw a tutorial that discussed that, maybe from Dreamlight, but that was some time ago, and I don't know where or what that was right now.

In any case, thank you again for this still very useful information!

pds

This video may be helpful:

https://youtu.be/JeLdxBQzDdw

mavante

pds said:

This video may be helpful:

https://youtu.be/JeLdxBQzDdw

Fabulous, pds. Thank you very much. Yes, I had seen that exact video sometime last year, but didn't have a need for that process then. Now that I do, I couldn't remember what or where it was. (Terrible name for the video, because it doesn't say anything in it about creating an HDR from inside DS. I couldn't find it with any search. So glad to have this again!)

As for the Beauty Canvas approach, pfffffff! I have no idea why Richard or anybody recommends that. I tried it three times tonight, and it never rendered a single pixel. At all.

Melissa's method, which seems to be very similar to this video, works. (Melissa got there three years before the video, though.)  And this video tells very clearly and easily how to do in Photoshop what Melissa used Photomatix for. This is great. Thank you again.

Sevrin

mavante said:

pds said:

This video may be helpful:

https://youtu.be/JeLdxBQzDdw

Fabulous, pds. Thank you very much. Yes, I had seen that exact video sometime last year, but didn't have a need for that process then. Now that I do, I couldn't remember what or where it was. (Terrible name for the video, because it doesn't say anything in it about creating an HDR from inside DS. I couldn't find it with any search. So glad to have this again!)

As for the Beauty Canvas approach, pfffffff! I have no idea why Richard or anybody recommends that. I tried it three times tonight, and it never rendered a single pixel. At all.

The canvases are mostly (Material ID isn't) EXR files.   You need to reduce the exposure in your 2D editing program by more or less the exposure value in your tone mapping setting to get a reasonably lit image.

mavante

Sevrin said:

mavante said:

pds said:

This video may be helpful:

https://youtu.be/JeLdxBQzDdw

Fabulous, pds. Thank you very much. Yes, I had seen that exact video sometime last year, but didn't have a need for that process then. Now that I do, I couldn't remember what or where it was. (Terrible name for the video, because it doesn't say anything in it about creating an HDR from inside DS. I couldn't find it with any search. So glad to have this again!)

As for the Beauty Canvas approach, pfffffff! I have no idea why Richard or anybody recommends that. I tried it three times tonight, and it never rendered a single pixel. At all.

The canvases are mostly (Material ID isn't) EXR files.   You need to reduce the exposure in your 2D editing program by more or less the exposure value in your tone mapping setting to get a reasonably lit image.

But you first need an EXR file to perform such operations on, and I tried to say as clearly as I am able that "it never rendered a single pixel," but I often fail miserably—in these forums—to state what I'm trying to say in a way that is understood. I apologize.

I'm going to search all settings in every "page" of render settings tonight when I am able, and try it all a fourth and maybe fifth time.

Meanwhile, I got happy results with the method that started this thread, except using Photoshop rather than Photomatix (only because I'm familiar with Photoshop and not with Photomatix).

pds

mavante said:

pds said:

This video may be helpful:

https://youtu.be/JeLdxBQzDdw

Fabulous, pds. Thank you very much. Yes, I had seen that exact video sometime last year, but didn't have a need for that process then. Now that I do, I couldn't remember what or where it was. (Terrible name for the video, because it doesn't say anything in it about creating an HDR from inside DS. I couldn't find it with any search. So glad to have this again!)

You are quite welcome, @mavante! I had run across the video not too long ago and bookmarked it to try out at some point; I agree the video could be better named.

 

Melissa Conway

You're welcome! :)  Glad PDS popped in with that helpful video on how to use Photoshop with this method.

mavante said:

Melissa Conway said:

In any case, thank you again for this still very useful information!

 

mavante

Now Sevrin has come up with some pretty impressive results using canvases, going on over in this thread:

Creating HDRIs using Daz assets - Cityscapes, etc