Digital Art Zone

I am interested in buying a collection of HDRI file to use in Carrara! I want a lot of OUTDOOR daytime with sky and some maybe in city a few inside.

Anyone have any comments or tell me of a good well rounded collection?

http://hdrlabs.com/sibl/archive.html

If you can’t find something there, I’ll eat my hat.

Don’t forget to grab all that lovely free editing software and manuals as well.

but be careful - MUCHO SIZO HDRIO

cheers
Chris

RichardChaos - 09 November 2012 08:08 PM

I am interested in buying a collection of HDRI file to use in Carrara! I want a lot of OUTDOOR daytime with sky and some maybe in city a few inside.

Anyone have any comments or tell me of a good well rounded collection?

If that is all you want you don’t need HDRI. Buying HDRI just to use as a back ground is like buying a van to use as a greenhouse; don’t laugh, if it has a sun roof it works great.

I make HDRIs for the lighting :D That is mostly what the are made for. 

http://www.openfootage.net/?cat=6  Yes, it has free and nice HDRIs too.

ManStan - 10 November 2012 08:02 AM

RichardChaos - 09 November 2012 08:08 PM

I am interested in buying a collection of HDRI file to use in Carrara! I want a lot of OUTDOOR daytime with sky and some maybe in city a few inside.

Anyone have any comments or tell me of a good well rounded collection?

If that is all you want you don’t need HDRI. Buying HDRI just to use as a back ground is like buying a van to use as a greenhouse; don’t laugh, if it has a sun roof it works great.

An old school bus works better…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yrmGjQxFYBM&feature=youtu.be

I took a bunch of the HDRI files listed here and rendered a stock Carrara scene file over and over again.  No other changes besides the HDRI map.  The results are amazing.  HDRI and the Carrara renderer really work well together.

I would never use an HDRI for a background! Only for lighting.

RichardChaos - 10 November 2012 06:09 PM

I would never use an HDRI for a background! Only for lighting.

Good for stills, terrible for animation due to the light calculations. I would try a few free ones from the sites suggested above to see how they work for you.

Remember, you must have Skylight enabled in the Render room. It’s also a common mistake to leave the Light through Transparency box unchecked in the Skylight/Indirect Light section of the render settings.

Fake GI is the way to go for animation and Tim Payne’s set of fake GI lights is very good and fast with the medium speed lights.

If and until a plugin for Octane Render is done for Carrara, you won’t see anything faster for GI in animation use. They are getting close to releasing the official v1 of Octane Render. v1.0 RC3 was made available today. Roeland said it should be the last release candidate before the final release of v1.0.  Then you can go HDRI crazy (but of course with limitations)!

I am gunna give the DOME stuff a try! PAYNE also has some Vol. skys that look good!

ONE question… I want to have a OBJECT very close top a tall wall and want to block an light front reaching the car fro ma DOME thing BUT dont wall this wall to be visible in the rende cause I want a background image in the scene that has the wall in it i want…

Can I make this WALL object INVISIBLE BUT want to BL:OCK the light from the down

How do I do that

Not sure HOW one uses LIGHT DOMES but have always wanted to give them a try

Light Dome Tutorial is here:
http://www.3d.wetcircuit.com/tutorials/create-an-environment-lighting-dome/

HI Richard

A Light dome,. or Sky dome,. is a Hemisphere model .. with lights replicated on the inside, pointing at the centre of the scene.

In Tim Payne’s versions they’re also using the colours of the Light dome surface.  and they’re really nicely done.

ONE question… I want to have a OBJECT very close top a tall wall and want to block an light front reaching the car fro ma DOME thing BUT dont wall this wall to be visible in the rende cause I want a background image in the scene that has the wall in it i want…

If I understand you,.. you want the Global illumination from the sky-dome (or HDRI) to light the scene, but not light a specific object. (I’m not sure why you would want to)..  ..and you also want a different image as the Backdrop to your scene.

The scene tab has two options for the Background and the Backdrop.

If you add an HDRI image to the Background slot,. it will show up in you render,  (unless you render with Alpha channel enabled) and it will illuminate the scene (if sky light is enabled in the render options) ..

If you add an image to the BackDrop slot,. then it will Fill the camera view.

Your choices include Compositing,.. or limiting each light source so that it doesn’t illuminate the object, but still illuminates all other scene objects.

hope that makes sense

RichardChaos - 12 November 2012 11:48 AM

I am gunna give the DOME stuff a try! PAYNE also has some Vol. skys that look good!

ONE question… I want to have a OBJECT very close top a tall wall and want to block an light front reaching the car fro ma DOME thing BUT dont wall this wall to be visible in the rende cause I want a background image in the scene that has the wall in it i want…

Can I make this WALL object INVISIBLE BUT want to BL:OCK the light from the down

How do I do that

Ummm…. I think maybe you want to try a shadow catcher for the invisible wall. I know it will mask objects behind it, but I haven’t tried it as a way to block light.

Not sure what you’re saying in the last part of the last sentence, but a light dome is usually used to simulate a natural atmospheric type of light, so it’s pretty much all the way around the scene, with probably a brighter light(s) for the main sunlight and dimmer lights for the diffuse atmospheric lights. Not sure how you’d block 360º of light.

chris poole - 09 November 2012 08:40 PM

http://hdrlabs.com/sibl/archive.html

If you can’t find something there, I’ll eat my hat.

Don’t forget to grab all that lovely free editing software and manuals as well.

but be careful - MUCHO SIZO HDRIO

cheers
Chris

these are lovely, been playing with them and shadowcatcher planes all day
eek I even used skylight and indirect light in an animation render with one which I never do.

I guess I have put the cart before the horse! I will finish my MODELING then start placing it in my scene and go from there. AND then start bitching about how oty make it work then! Basically I have UPARMOURED/UPGUNNED a Jefferson County Illinois Sheriffs Dodge Charger. complete with the M151 Remote 50 Caliber machine gun turret system. I want to place the model in scenes I have taken picture of and want to seamlessly insert them.

Then send in the pictures as PNGs of course (No metadata) to the local paper anonymously of course OR signed 3DAGE! LOL!

The PNG (Portable network graphic) was developed by Macromedia for use in web design, so,.. it can contain metadata.
BUT…
If you send it as a printed jigsaw puzzle,.. you could print 3DAGE on the bottom corner,...  they may never figure it out.

There’s no meta-data on cardboard, or wood,. .... yet.

Adding your customised 3D vehicle to the real world should be as easy as adding a BackDROP, with the real world photo,. and a plane with a shadow catcher shader (for the ground) and then using either lights or an HDRI in the BackGROUND, or a mix or both to create the scene light and ground shadows,.. Using an HDRI will also be used in the reflections on the vehicle.

One more thing,.. In carrara, you can also use a “normal” jpeg image in the background,.. rather than an HDRI.

this means that you could use the Real world photo,. in the scene background, and you’ll get some reflections on the bodywork, from that image.

If you have photoshop you can also create a 32bit HDRI image from your photo.