MEC4D
Siciliano1969
Posts: 433
I absolutely am loving the Garden HDRI set. I would love to see an interior HDRI set next. Like a house, apartment, office etc...
Post edited by Siciliano1969 on
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Thanks , next will be Beach set then Traditional Chinese Garden, House and Rooms and after some historical building interior rooms, the licenses are not cheap for commercial photography so I go as much as budget allows so I don't have the tourists inside my shots ;) I wish I had access to modern office , I was even talking about today , but who knows what opportunity I have tomorrow
Thanks MEC4D, I love your products and will definately buy whatever you offer!
Hmmm beach set...I can't wait for that!
Yes Beach Megapack with 5 HDRIs and another really great sets with top quality .
Oh, I really need those! Hope they come out soon. :)
Hey MEC4D, the lights look great and I am thinking of picking them up myself. Are the promo renders you in the store just renders using the lights and figures in the scenes or was there post work done as well?
Hi , thanks , I render using canvases so you can setup everything after render for desired mood , but the lights are set to render stright in DS with perfect photographic result , some renders was direct from viewport other using canvases , for me post work is when you add elements that does not was in the original render , tonemapping is not a postwork so the answer is NO , all renders use light from the HDRI only no additional light
here couple renders stright from viewport
Thanks alot for the information. I purchased your other two packs, Industrial and Liberty. Although I have been rendering with Iray for a while I still haven't figured out everything about Iray. How do you properly use the canvases, I have not even touched that feature. I am super interested in how you made this below image. I tried getting the same hdri too match the same position but all it does for me is give dark shadows and doesn't look the same at all. Anways, I'm just browsing through the shop and I will be picking up the garden set as well once I'm done browsing.
This is what I get when I get close to the same positon when I render and using the deault load setting from smart menu.
I always have a problem with the hard-edged shadows generated by HDRIs. Does anyone know of a way of making them softer?
Cheers,
Alex.
First of all the skin shaders are not the same , your skin looks like absorbing too much light , for full body renders better to choice the less transulency material from the materials folder of your character , next you need to go to Tone mapping and adjust the ISO to higher value until you happy with the result , for this type of render position agains the sun you can use a white plane if front of the character to get extra light or turn on Head lamp on the camera with little value for the backlight , also under Tone mapping you can set the Blaks to little lower for portriat study that will soft out the contrast of the render and the highlight values will give you stronger reflections or softer .
Rendering with canvases you need a image editor that can edit HDRI images as it render for you in HDRI format , it do the same as Tone mapping in iray but you don;t need to re render everytime you change the settings .
I guess I need to make a video to showing some workflows ASAP
Hi Alex, sun light is like spot light it create hard edges ( contrast between sun light and ambjent light ), you can get it down a little bit by lowering the Blacks and Highlights under Tone mapping , as this settings give you the choice to make the render softer or with more contrast, it will not change the edges but the transition between the light and dark area will be softer , and if you means a jaged edges of shadows on your model then you need to subdivide it , obj models tend to create the jagged edges on low subdivision that why other PBR programs like Octane or Reality plugins convert the format to triangles and subdivide
Check the screens for the tone mapping settings and headlamps
Personally, I do not do that anymore as all tone mapping settings and lighting in iray can be adjusted when rendering canvases and using Photoshop darkroom as that is time and energy saving in place of sitting for hours tweaking and rerendering everything, I just put everything in the scene I want then render out Canvases and adjust the light in shadows in Photoshop , with my HDRI you have full Iray dynamic range to do it , not all HDRI you find or buy have it so how lower the dynamics of the HDRI how less you can adjust the light settings in iray or when rendering using canvases (hdri renders )
All scenes with my HDRI are set to standard at the same values as my camera shot the pictures but you have full control of the highlight, shadows and white balance under Render Settings / Tone Mapping , a lot of skin materials and materials in general for iray are set not correctly, or was made for spotlight lighting and not when using the standard sky-dome light and in most cases are too dark in short not so iray ready as they should
Headlamp under the camera is for backlighting, it represents the white plane (reflection plane ) photographers using when shooting portraits or models against strong sun light to reduce the contrast between the light and shadows see example below
Headlamp is easier to use but even better simple white plane , it will create the correct light power diffuse reflection what is great for human portraits , you can change the power of the reflected light power by changing the diffuse to gray or darker or even change the diffuse color of color effects , it will be more in harmony of the total HDRI lighting and it will render faster and allow you to move the viewport faster in real time as Headlamps slow down the live viewport of iray
Here is a quick render in Octane using the Gardens vol one. This is now the HDRI files I use for outside scenes...thanks MEC4D!
Nice , me too , Gardens vol.1 is my standard outdoor lighting for most everything including full 3D scenes, tomorrow morning I am shooting Atlantic Beach HDRIs and more so great sets are coming in the coming weeks.
Thanks for the tips, MEC4D. I will be looking forward to the beach HDRIs. Any chance you will also do indoors such as a few different houses/rooms?
Excellent, just bought HDRI-Liberty Park NY #1 - can't wait to use it.
Since I consider you one of the best sources of knowledge in CG I would love to see more tutorials from you. You are very generous for the tips you provide on the forums. Thank you so much!
I like the recent HDRI series. I suspect I now know a bit more of why ruined apocalyptic properties are common HDRI packages. The royalties are smaller? I like the variety of areas covered and promised.
I've found on my Mac the recent HDRI efforts don't load except on an empty new scene. This has me scrambling about my image building processes. I usueally start with the foreground characters and work the backgrounds last. My most common image format is golden ratio portrait. With the recent HDRIs, I've been working foreground and background seperately then merging them, often having to over ride the HDRI's settings and image sizes. Is there a reason your HDRIs can't be applied to existing foregrounds, and why landscapes are pushed? It's not like I can't work around it, but I'm old enough that change seems tedious.
My local pro football team occasionally releases 'how it was done' pictures of their annual cheerleader bikini calandar shoots. You quite often see a guy with a large silvered piece of cardboard running around, reflecting sunlight onto the shadowed side of the cheerleader whose picture is being taken. It is so much like my habit of inserting spotlights targeting shadowy areas into an HDRI render that I could see exactly what he was doing. As a kid, my parents taught me that in an outdoor photo shoot, the photographer always goes up sun. Good rule. However, if you are going to be flexible in what angles you use from an HDRI file, you are awfully limited if you decide always to shoot from up sun. I'll quite often add a spotlight and pretend it's a guy with sliver cardboard.
Today's 'new toys' test. G8's Kiara with G2's Big Afro hair in the new Liberty Park. The guy with the silver cardboard is off to the left. As I wanted Kiara's face lit, the guy is holding his cardboard low to the ground to avoid the big afro. Note how dark the grass is in the shadow around Kiara's left hand. In a pre spotlight draft Kiara was just that dark, a silhouette, everywhere the sun didn't touch her.
Did you have to pay royalties to the ghost on the walkway on the left side of the picture?
Dragon off the port bow. ;)
Yes after that I have some nice photo session tomorrow in historical buildings inside and out you will love it ! I promise
You see , you need to follow the photographic rules and camera focal length when working with HDRI, for that reason I included the Cameras , you have also an option to render out backplates, then render your model with the HDRI without the dome and place over a backplate in image editor , if you mess up the scale and the focal length you will get not the right result, it is easy as you may think but I guess I really need to find the time and do some video tutorials in the direction . You can use any image format you want there are no rules and most images that got bad are thanks to wrong focal length , HDRI is made for make your render looks as realistic and to blend with the reality as possible and you can all do it just if you know the simple directions what are easy to follow not need to be professional photographer as long you follow the photographic rules.
There will be in the future special HDRI for portraits only with the main focus on your character and less of the pretty picture behind, just stick around and follow the thread and I will post here more stuff soon so we have more fun rendering and learn more from each other.
P.S I did not get quite your question about the pushed landscapes and foreground, I shot the HDRI so they have as much space as possible another way your shadows ends in wrong spaces
You can always load the HDRI at the end but then your scales will get wrong as in your image above and so different will be the lighting, you need to start from the background and go toward the foreground to build the full scene so your proportions will be correct
Most of my work I do late night so no you are not nuts still rendering at 1:30 am as that is the time I start until the down .. anyway I need to catch some sleep as I have to travel to Staten Island in 4 hours to catch the morning sun on the Beach before the masses run to cool off by the sea . Morning light is the best, it is the magic hour when the sun is in the right position and create fewer shadows on the faces later while rendering and of course fewer people walking around to destroy my shots and that can be annoying sometimes when they try to be in that pictures asking me what for photo machine is that lol literary .... in the world of cell phones some people don't know how camera looks like anymore .. sad reality lol I will catch with you guys Sunday evening and don't forget to get your HDRI freebie tomorrow afternoon it is going to be cool one ! until then happy rendering
Thansk again for the tips MEC4D, and keep up the good work. Looking forward to both the beachand interiors. We don't have too many interors for HDRI lighting. Also, thanks for providing a freebie tomorrow.
LOL, thanks so much now I feel better! Get some sleep, and I can't wait to see what you come up with next! My new favorite for human renders.... HDRI-Liberty Park NYC #2!
Thank you, talking about HDRI-Liberty Park NYC #2! and human renders and image ratios . all you need to set up the 35mm full body camera from the set and then you can change the ratio of image as you please without to worry about anything else, below example rendered in black and white (saturation to zero )
That looks awesome and real. I've always took an interest in black and white photos myself, the same goes with films.
EDIT: Here is a render I did using the same black and white trick and the 35mm full body camera.
Thanks, Cath, this is very helpful. I shall venture deep into the bowels of the tone mapping tab.
Cheers,
Alex.
Great info Cath, i really love all of the HDRIs, but this one especially. I think Mei posed 001 looks great, but what is that she is holding...maybe something top secret? LOL. I usually have the camera set at 35mm in Octane so that will be easy. Looking forward to more HDRI!
Liberty Park NYC #2 is a great one I agree, heck all the Mec4d HDRI's are great! The most difficult part of them is actually deciding which one to use! I'm really looking forward to the beach pack because there are so few good beach HDRI's out there (that are within my price range) and these are bound to blow me away like all the rest. Enjoy yourself at the beach Cath and without wanting to overstep the mark here if you happen to take any swimsuit selfies while you are there I'm sure we'd all be quite happy for you to share them here as well.
Peace and love,
Stuart
That's amazing! Such a great mood captured there!
I think she holding the new HDRI Tutorials lol wow for 9 hours I was walking, just returned after 11 hours and I am exhausted , it was hot today and no time for bikini at all , I can;t believe the beach was full of people at 7 am , crazy but I go in the more wild region and got fantastic shots as much as possible , then I go foTuscanyny romantic gardens and did more , made my 64 GB SD card full so it was a day as planned for me just so tired so going take a nap and will be later tonight with some preview stuff to tease you all hahaha mission acomplished !