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So here are two renders of the same figure (which by the way is converted from a V4 character to G8F), one using one of Mec4D's superb Beach HDRIs and one using an HDRI that I made yesterday by taking a panorama image with my camera, then adding painted areas for the top and bottom areas (which unless you tilt the camera dramatically you will not see) and adding HDRI lighting with the technique in Part 2 of my videos. Both are just the raw renders. I think they both look good!
These look great, Phil! Thanks again for sharing your method, and the images - keep 'em coming!
- Greg
This is a very helpful thread. Thanks to PhilW for starting it, and all the contributors.
Phil, what hair is that? Did you apply VWD to it, or another plugin, or something else? Or is it a straight mesh model with morphs?
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@Diomede - Thanks for your comment - the hair is Olenna Hair for G3F, fitted to G8F. The only change from its standard settings is that I applied one of my Hair Lustre Shaders for iRay to it, which I do for all my renders with hair.
Thanks, looks great.
Looking great Phil ! in both renders
I bought this book from the master many years ago and still ocassionally refer to it. The HDRI Handbook 2.0: High Dynamic Range Imaging for Photographers and CG Artists by Stephen Bloch. It's pricey but well researched and worth the price.
Phil,
Thanks for this. I was unaware you could download Google street views as panoramas. Cool.
However, I'm sure you're aware that you're not making a true high dynamic range (HDR) image right? Not even close. I see you're manually forcing the sun area to have a "high dynamic range", but all the rest of the panorama is very low dynamic range. Which means that it isn't providing anywhere near realistic lighting in the scene. And that's why, aside from the sun area, the lighting is very uniform, rather than reflecting actual uneven bounce lighting from light/dark areas. And in a panorama without a single light source (eg, cloudy or indoors), the lighting will be pretty much unusable I suspect, and require a lot of manual/emissive light sources placed in the scene.
It basically comes down to you can't get correct lighting information from an image that doesn't have it in the first place. And even the sun lighting information you're injecting is just a guess.
On the other hand, having a great source of panoramas available that you can use as a basis, and then manually adding reflection lights (with your best guesses for intensity and color), is a great tool.
Thanks for the suggestion. The paperback is a little expensive. Do you think the reference value would decline too much on the kindle edition? It is meant to be visual after all.
BTW, I'm curious why you go to the trouble of modifying the panorama image in Photoshop to increase the range of the sun area. Why not just add a distant or other light in D|S to do the same thing? That will give you more realtime control over colors and intensity. Though it won't stick to the panorama if you rotate it...
@ebergerly - Yes, as has been pointed out, I am well aware that this process is not the same as doing a full photographic HDRI, and I agree that there are some images/situations that would be very difficult to convert a JPG to HDRI. The advantages of having the lighting "baked" into the image include the rotation issue you mentioned, also portability to different applications and convenience. Plus if there are multple light sources, it might be easier to edit the image rather than set up matching multiple light sources.
However I'd just like to pick up on the "is it a true HDRI" as this has been mentioned a few times by different people. If you preview most ("real") HDRIs in photoshop or whatever program you are using, you will see that most of a typical image falls within the gamut of 0-255 levels, ie. most of the image is not blown out. In most exterior scenes, it is only the sun which is really blown out. Lighting is contributed by the rest of the scene, but most of that light falls within the 0-255 range - if it did not, you would see it as bleached out in the preview. So there is no magical differnce between an HDRI which is generated by multiple photographic exposures and one which is edited to be an HDRI.
For other situations which aren't in direct sunlight, you can use your common sense to work out where light is coming from. For an overcast day for example, there are probably areas of the clouds that are blown out, thus creating a very diffuse light. I have selected those areas using the color selection to only include the very brightest areas and increased the exposure on that selection to give very nice results, which would (I think) be very similar to that produced by multiple exposures. (You are of course correct about estimating the intensity of the light).
Similarly for interiors, you could select the windows or any visible interior lights and increase the exposure on those.
A photographic HDRI will also have more detail in the shadows - this will be important for some scenes where the lighting is adjusted so that those shadow areas are prominant, but of little importance in other scenes where the HDRI is such that the shadow areas would appear black or near black anyway and contribute minimal lighting to the the scene.
So to summarise, I agree that HDRIs produced by multiple exposures with good equipment will always be the "gold standard", but in many situations, the "quick and dirty" method that I outlined can produce very usable - and very comparable - results.
I agree with Phil's comments, and would add that "faking" it can have other benefits, too. I have come across HDRIs being sold in the store (pricey ones) that suffer from extreme chromatic abberation, and other noise. While some of these can be fixed by editing the 32-bit HDRI, it is often times much easier to address when operating on a 8-bit or 16-bit image (not to mention all of the other artistic processing that simply can't be done on an HDRI).
- Greg
I'm still not sure why you'd go to the trouble of modifying the panorama image in PS, saving it, loading into D|S, finding it wasn't quite right, going back to PS, tweaking, and so on. I would think you'd just use the panorama as a background, and add lights/emissives to the scene manually to simulate reflective light from the scene. Then you have all kinds of control, you can tweak them in real time until you get the right intensity/color (especially if you have that awesome plugin that allows you to adjust all your scene lights in one control panel).
Anyway, whatever works I suppose.
You'll get a better background image by converting the JPG to an HDRI, even if you don't extend the dynamic range, as the color values will be truer without the gamma curve being applied (which will happen if you use the JPG directly as the environment image). It is then not much trouble to add some lighting to the image. But yes, definitely horses for courses. It is just useful to have an extra tool in your toolset, even if you seldom feel the need to use it.
To PhilW;
This will be a confusing, vague email so start with the important stuff.
Thank you very much for this thread!!!!
Not so much for the information contained, but, you started for me a process that led to:
1. Rereading the textbooks I have on HDRI ( one for dummies is the best).
2. Rereading my camera manual ( hdri people will understand)
3. Each day creating a singular HDRI Panorama (PT GUI) that works great in all my software.
Now have about 6 that I would match against ones sold here.
4. Since you started this thread have done a total relearning process that was 100% worth the time
Although your tutorials are geared using a procedure that I do not follow, some of the information and discussion generated
was invaluable.
One slight problem, one of the hdri's I made was during a day it was 98 degrees here, but I forgive you
Thank you again
Biggest take away....took an hdri into photoshop, selected light source, adjusted exposure, reimported hdri back to
Daz............GREAT!!
Best of Luck!!!
Thanks for your post - I am so glad that it inspired you!
Since free version of Unity got recently free Octane render plugin, I have rendered the free forest scene in it
and saved the 4K render as untonemappedd 16 bit exr file. I used that exr in iray in Daz Studio and rendered Katarina
https://www.daz3d.com/katarina-hd-for-genesis-8-female
Artini - very creative! The lighting looks very red but then it is clearly around sunset.
The links to the YouTube videos are in the very first post on this thread. I hope you like them!
I finally got around to trying this and istreetview appears to be dead. It redirects you to some other site that lets you see a 360 view but there is no option to download it. Unless I'm missing something. Still, all the advice here is still legit for the internally generated images from DAZ Studio or other applications. plus panoramas that you can pull from various places, albeit with some tweaking.
Yeah I think the original was closed down due to copyright issues (maybe). try this one:
https://sv.appio.eu
Try pressing the Random Location a few times and if my experience is anything to go by, you can find some amazing places!
Phil, I was just surfing around Google maps because the link you posted is blocked at my office and I decided to visit a pseudo random location as you suggest. I picked poland and dropped in on some random location and I ended up in front of a church. Pretty cool, but I noticed it would let me actually go into the driveway, which I did. Then it let me continue into the church. All the way up to the altar in fact (see below). I have never ever seen Google maps let you go into a building, maybe it's been there for selected ones but I am still taken aback. I know that mCasual's approach could make it possible for me to grab these locations too now. So thanks for prodding me into a new discovery!
Just following the icon in the upper left corner (the photographer I guess) led me to all sorts of other places he took 360 shots, the inside of a house, backyard, etc. Very cool.
Oh yes, Google Maps does allow for you to go "inside" some buildings. Some of a my local businesses have this, all of them on main street. The Google Maps people ask for permission, and if granted they take their 360 camera inside. Some places that have lots of walkways might have a rather large network of these featured in Maps. You may notice these pictures usually show the place empty, so this is being done before most businesses open. They might have software that helps edit out some people now. Sometimes you can see a clock or something to reveal a time. Its very cool, you can take virtual tours with just Google Maps.
Yes, I have found that using the random feature I have found various interiors and off-road locations (for example beaches) that initially you wouldn't associate with Google Maps. And with the ability to turn these into backgrounds for 3D, the World is available!
I have occasionally taken photos of an area with lots of pedestrians maybe a minute apart - enough time for everyone to be in a different position - and by layering the two images was able to quickly erase the people from one image, revealing the empty landscape in the lower layer. Of course had to be on a tripod so camera remained in the precise same location and had to be very closely spaced in time so lighin / shadows and the like are the same in both shots. Anyway after the editing you end up with an landscape of, say, a chateaux in france with no tourists in it (as one real example). I would tihnk the same could be done in software, basically tale the pano twice, find the differences and get rid of the stuff that doesn't match the background well, layering in the clean part of the other image. In fact, I'll bet that's been implemented. Google doesnt do it on their streetview because the camera is moving and they are only passing by once anyway. But if you have time and a stationary camera, should be pretty straightforward even for software.
I gave up on the idea of making hdri’s for my own use with a camera, too expensive, I’ll definitely check these out and got a lot of use from dreamlight tutorials as well
Dreamlight's tutorial was done after I posted mine for free - I'd be interested to know if it basically says the same thing.