HDRI question

wayneout_edeaad0859

I trying to learn HDRI lighting by following a Pammy Baddhan tutorial
I found a product here called Studio Light Pro by Dreamlight. If I buy it where will DIM install it? Will it be under lights or lighting in my Daz Content folder?
And how to I get it to show up in my render settings?  
Maybe this product is too much for someone just starting out. I really only care about the lighting and not the Dome part.  I say that this might be too
much for me because it has all this settings about angles etc. that I know nothing about. I found a earlier post from a few years ago that listed free maps
but most of the links were dead or confusing.  Is there a good place to find free maps or should I just stick with the default Daz one?   
Thanks

markusmatern

When you want to know about installed files of a product you can visit the ReadMe page of the product:

In your case: http://docs.daz3d.com/doku.php/public/read_me/index/55639/start

There you'll find also a list of files that will get installed: http://docs.daz3d.com/doku.php/public/read_me/index/55639/file_list

When you want to experiment with HDRIs I highly recommend the free ones from HDRI Haven

Hylas

wayneout_edeaad0859 said:

I found a product here called Studio Light Pro by Dreamlight. If I buy it where will DIM install it? Will it be under lights or lighting in my Daz Content folder?

If you don't know where DIM installed something: Go to DIM and find your product in the "installed" column.

Right-click on the product and choose "Show installed files"

You can ignore everythinng that's installed in "data" and "runtime/textures".

The user relevant files are usually in "people", "props", "environment", etc.

For very old products they may be in "runtime/library/..."

 

I agree that you should start with free HDRI's.

Some free HDRI resources that I use all the time:
https://www.deviantart.com/agentunawares/gallery/64098035/freebies
https://www.deviantart.com/zbyg/gallery/6278123/resources
https://gumroad.com/l/DXEPj
https://hdrihaven.com/
https://www.deviantart.com/laticis/art/Laticis-FREE-Images-Lighting-Accessories-497411807

(If you already bought the Dreamlight product and you're not happy with it, there's a 30 days return policy, FYI)

wayneout_edeaad0859

Thanks for the ino. At the end of the video tutorial, it listed the haven website and I found a couple of good ones. I
will check out the others listed here.

SpottedKitty

Don't forget there's a set of moderately high-res HDRIs in the free starter content. They're pretty good, not quite great, but useful for getting your brain wrapped around the idea.

cajhin

Well, that youtube video *was* pretty confusing. I recommend one from Jay Versluis, was helpful when I learned the basics:

The default HDRIs (search the smart lib for HDR *not* for HDRI) are ok. I actually use Maui a lot for nice quick and easy renders. HDRI haven has some good maps but often the light isn't quite right and needs adjustment (perhaps too much dynamic range?)

2k maps are good for learning. 16k looks nice in final renders but will probably slow DAZ down considerably.