Question about the HDRI IRay Space product
Wonderland
Posts: 7,137
in The Commons
I'm confused about what this actually is... Is this a HDRI light/map that would replace the default one on the dome? And if so, if you rotate the dome, to get the light on the front or side of the subject, in the case of the single planets, what is on the rest of the map, is it just black as it seems in the promos or are there stars or other images/light sources...?
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The product is a set of HDR files. These maps cap be rotated etc as with any HDRI map. There is no useful read me.
I get a black sky when I try to render one of the planets. The galaxy renders ok(ish). We're going to need some help from the PA. When I try to render very large (10000 x 5600) with the galaxy It seems to be very zoomed in?
I'm thinking of a refund unless some usage help appears.
[Edited for clarity]
Readme http://docs.daz3d.com/doku.php/public/read_me/index/37795/start
Thanks Cho, but that readme is no more helpful than the product store page which it seems to mimic.
I admit I am curious about it, could really use something like it, but, dark scenes on my rig are problematic. Need more infor before buying.
Hey guys, im here. What sort of problems are we having?
They are HDRI's yes. I pre-rendered them and baked them into HDRIs to save you guys doing it. Some of them took 6 hours to render on Two titan x's so i thought it would be better offer them as hdri's rather than full sets. Plus, some of the material functions i used aren't available in daz, so i would have had to use baked textures, meaning more render load. I hope this decision makes sense to everyone.
Zoomed in? I did set up a few of the scene's as close-ups. Your camera settings maybe pertinent here too, it's all relative to the scene you're trying to compose. You could try changing your focal length from the stock 65 down to maybe 30? For wider shots i used a wider lens.
I hear you. I have included a "sun" in the majority of the scene's, so there is a dominant light source in most of them. It's a bit tricky to brighten up space scene's, due to there very nature, but i tried to balance all of them to produce the most light possible. In the promo shot with the moon base, there is absolutely no other lighting in the scene, it's all lit with a baked sun out of shot.
Iray starfields! Fantastic stuff! I like the fact that there are two different types of sunlight illumination, too. Shall be buying this in just a few moments!
For those wondering about light, space is meant to be a dark place. :) Just light your scene in addition to using the HDRI stuff. I've yet to get around to actually watching this, even though I purchased it, but Dreamlight does some excellent video tutorials and created one specifically for assisting with Iray-generated space art:
https://www.daz3d.com/daz-studio-iray-deep-space-video-tutorial
Kindred, do you have any plans for something like this with an underwater theme? There could be all sorts of environments, from shallows, beaches, to featureless spooky expanses and the sea bed deep on an ocean floor (and I'd think any HDRI stuff would be perfect to combine with Terradome 3, too). Maybe even some differently-coloured variations of water it simulate completely alien or fantasy worlds. Films like 'The Abyss' or the excellent 'Subnautica' game are great artistic inspirations.
Thanks Xeno! Underwater is definitely an option, and it would definitely benefit for pre-rendering. The only issue i have to overcome is the foggy/misty/volumetric nature of underwater scenes. I can bake all that into an HDRI no problem, but when you render, for instance, a diver - the diver would not have the same foggy underwater effect that the HDRI would. The lighting information would be correct, but that lack of mist on the character might make it look a bit odd. It would probably take some sort of hybrid approach, or custom shading. It's in the memory bank though, i'll see what i can do
Good point. Should be able to be fixed with a volumetric cube or some such, but a background environment would help hugely.
Out of curiosity, what's the difference between the files starting with 'Iray' and those beginning with 'HDRI'? Both are showing in the Smart Content panel as render settings. I'm guessing which one we use is situation-specific.
Hmm, i'm not sure what daz has done with the meta data there. I only sent them one file with render presets in, so i imagine they all do exactly the same thing. There are no 3dl versions or alternatives, so i'm not overly sure. I dont use smart content so i can't really test the theory on my end. To play it safe i would just use the ones begining with "Iray".
Thanks @KindredArts, but I'm still confused (I started with DS last year at this time and still barely know what I'm doing LOL!) If I rotate the dome to get light from one of the alien planets, let's say, to get more light on the front or side of the character, then the background would be pitch black? And so these are not meant to be rotated and I would need to add similarly colored lights through the side windows or front in addition to the HDRIs, is that correct?
And my other question is about rendering-- can these be rendered on a CPU only computer? (Mac with 32GB RAM) Thanks.
Instead of rotating the dome I played with the camera direction; when I have it facing Left|Back corner (as determined by the cube) there's usually The Thing prominent in the HDRI.
ETA: I'm rendering a test render now, with just my CPU. I'll report back.
Not sure why, but I find I always have to rotate hdri domes 180 degrees to get the intended lighting for certain PAs. I fiddle with lighting so much that I don't mind it, but I'm often curious why that happens. Good example is https://www.daz3d.com/iradiance-light-probe-hdr-lighting-for-iray
which I absolutely love for speed rendering, but I have to rotate them 180 to match the intended lighting on the icon.
OK, so JUST the HDRI rendered at 1k (the 8k Earth one) rendered nearly instantly on my (admittedly beefy) CPU. However, you're going to get the other Iray slowdowns, especially with no ground plane to bounce light back again (or other lights). The below is only 40% done but I stopped it because it was clear the lack of other light was slowing the render wayyyyy down. I have some other stuff I'm poking at, but since I don't have any spaceships that are prelit for Iray or not made entirely of wretched glass (space cathedrals), other off the cuff test renders are taking a while. So I think they'll render... as fine as you might expect? on your Mac, as long as you take into account the challenges of lighting.... in.... space!
Oh, the below was at Exposure 8, too.
What is that thing sticking out? If you didn't add a spaceship, is that part of the HDRI? Sorry. I'm still so confused about this...
I'll probably purchase this later in the day... will there be more space HDRIs in the future? There seems to be a lack of commercial products filling that space for some reason.
Probably because people can't take their camera into outer-space... Aren't HDRIs usually created with a camera?
I suppose yes "normal" ones are but I have seen others create them in software like Bryce. You just need software like HDR Shop or Picturenaut to "stitch" the multiple images into a single HDR image. In fact I saw on a thread here where some people were experimenting with creating them in DS as well.
That is the Atlantida Spaceguard, which is a pre-iray spaceship, so no emissive running lights to add more light to scene.
It was kind of fun in a weird way to turn on the Iray preview in Aux Viewport, then pan the camera around trying to find something. First I had the Alien Red Planet loaded and the first thing I found was this huge in-my-face asteroid? Moon? that I don't recall from the promos. Turned a bit more and suddenly there was the planet. Then I tested a lot of them to see if the left-back corner facing was consistent.
(I am now at my kid's homeschool co-op and cannot do more renders unless I Remote Desktop in.... which is an idea....)
I wonder if https://www.daz3d.com/light-probe-tool would help working with these.
Sorry guys, i've been in and out all day, but i'm here again!
Yes, i'm afraid if part of the hdri is dark, it's not going to produce much light. If you want light to seap in through the windows of the ship, you'll have to orient the hdri's light source towards the window. You can do this in the environment tab of the render settings. As for CPU rendering, i don't forsee the hdri's being an issue in themselves. They are a bit darker than regular hdris, due to their nature, but that's the only stumbling block. I believe dreamfarmer has spoken on this subject, so i'll leave it to them.
Speak of the devil! Great render DF, i dont have many iray ready spaceships at the minute either, so i had to tweak a few sets. Petipet has some great scifi vehicles though :)
Yes, hopefully, i actually named the set Vol. 1 in the folder structure, so i'd really like to expand on it. I think there is a lack of them because they are so tricky to do. I had to spend a small fortune on training materials because there's only a select few renderers that output true HDR images, and i wasn't particularly familiar with them. I will make some more though, provided people would like some more.
They are usually taken with a camera and a panoramic head ... well, normally anyway. That was a bit tricky in this case, so i had to model and pre-render them externally.
Planets with rings, please! A double star system! Ice planet!
I Realy Love this :)
@Twilight76 Fantastic render, I particularly love the reflections! What setting is this?
Great idea's, its all in the memory bank :)
Great render Twilight!
The blue asteroid field i think? Unless im mistaken..
Its the old Stonemason Sci-Fi Bedroom with the Asteroid Field Blue (310.59 Dome Rotation)
@dreamfarmer
Did you move the dome, either the ground or x,y,z orientations? Dome rotation?
The attached render has the Condor at x=0, y=0, z=-2000, but the planet is still "far away". 24mm Camera. Just loaded the 16K Earth. No other lighting.
I haven't touched the dome in my renders, just the camera. But my focal length was at the default. When I shorten the focal length to about 30 the planet moves 'further away'.
You could either lower your frame width or up your focal length. That will zoom your camera, but you will have to shift the condor further away to get it in shot (or move the camera back). I would use iray interactive view to get the right angle if possible.
Thanks for the fast answer. My first try was an empty scene w/ default camera and the earth HDRI. Result was a black screen. Second try was the galaxy and I got that.
I tried KA's recommendation for wide angle and prompted my question to you, so will go back to default focal length. I know some of my problems are just getting to know this product.
Edit: Whadda ya know. Default focal length works like a charm.
Great stuff! Looks like you've got the handle on it. I'm still monitoring the thread if you get stuck.