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Space ships in Asteroid Field Orange - edited in Nik Collection.
Using a wider lens would bring more of the Hdri in to view and improve fidelity. If this causes issues with your subject, you could of course render in layers.
Yes fastbike wanted some presets as well. I'll set up some cameras later on and upload my own presets for anyone who wants them.
Great render Artini! Everyone seems to be using Nik at the moment, i should probably stop being a dinosaur and have a look myself.
Thanks, KindredArts.
This is true with positioning any HDR. Its best, I would even say necessary to change the draw style to Iray in your viewport window, so you can rotate it how you want it first, before you load any objects into your scene. And if everything is dark, just put the tonemapping>Exposure Value down to 7.0. Even with the darkest HDR in this set, that will bring out the starfield and you can rotate the dome and figure out were you want it, and then add your objects and readjust your exposure value.
I should add, the only ones that don't have a visible starfield, even after lowering the Exposure Value, are HDRI Space Earth 16K and 8K. There's no visible starfield in these 2. Not sure if that was intentional or a mistake.
To view an HDRI while setting up I keep the AUX pane open, set it to Iray Draw and I dock it beside the Scene Tab. As I add or move items I hide it and then view it again, occasionally I just keep it open when possible. I turn the Iray Dome by 30º increments until I get the view in the camera that I want and then just tweak it a degree or two at a time to get it just right. If the light is facing the camera and the object is too dark I will add a Distant Light, set it very low light (even 0.1 if that is what it takes), move it so that it shines from a direction from behind the camera and set the colour to anything that gives a 'space' glow to the shadows. Nobody except me knows what the light source is outside the camera; it could be a gas giant, a nebula, sun, a distant star or a very big space station or space ship.
Like this where there is strong light shining on the planet from the right so I set the distant light to the top right to match.
if you have Adobe Lightroom then you don't really need Nik. I have Nik but since I got lightroom I don't use Nik much at all.
disregard that Nik has loads more to offer. :)
I love NIK! Using them has really improved some of my renders. The options are endless especially if you use more than one filter for different effects and composite using modes like overlay and/or screen or any of the other modes available.
Sorry, dinosaur here, what is NiK?
Free filters from Google that one can use with other 2D programs like Photoshop or Gimp. Can also be used as a standalone program. Tip: If you use as a standalone, make sure to use a copy of you image as it will completely overwrite the original.
https://www.google.com/nikcollection/
One more render...
Great render Artini, Love the greebles
Thanks, KindredArts. I am trying to find interesting environments, that looks good with your HDRIs.
Using the HDRI in 3Delight with Marshian's new Reflective Radiance for 3DL
And reality/luxrender
The lux one needs to bake more but you can see it works well. The 3dl one needs some more light I believe so I may try some 3Delight pseudo "ghost lights" which are possible with Marshian's new product as well to see if that helps.
What is bothering me about this set is the Sun Disk is soooo close to the planet.
I'd like to see the sun farther away so that it is much easier to keep it out of the scene,.....unless I'm missing something.
I know things can be adjusted, but it's so close I don't feel like I have much breathing room with it.
Yes, i would have made very different decisions if it were plausible to simply fake the light (I.E photometrics). Every scene had to be lit with accurate sources however, since the light cast by the HDR had to apply to the daz scene it would inevitably end up in. The top of the earth in that scene is actually lit by that sun, so it absolutely had to be there in order to cast the same amount of light into the end-users scene. If i were to take it away and simply urge the user to use their own lighting instead, there wouldn't be much point in them being Hdrs. So all of the sun disks included in the scenes, whilst a bit bland, are absolutely necessary for lighting purposes. I really just wanted to add lens flares to make them look more inviting, but again, it would have completely changed the lighting instead of looking like a lens effect.
I did however leave any sort of star-field out of the scene in order to allow the sun to be painted out in post with little effort.
Right, I understood its lit by the sun sphere, and I only know a mediocre amount about Hdri construction, but couldn't the sun sphere have been placed farther away on the dome with your intensity up to give the same effect? I'm guessing no, but with it in the position that its in, I'm also having a hard time lighting an object thats slightly in the foreground and to the side of the lit part of the planet while keeping the planet visible in the scene, no matter what, the light source always seems to be to the back of the prop as in my attachment. I keep modifying the rotate and the other axis but can never seem to get it right. Any tips here?
I can add a light to illuminate the front more but it will never sufficiently match the angle of the lighting hitting the planet. I'm stumped.
[edit to add]: Yeah, I'll definately have to get rid of the sun sphere in photoshop. It's awesome you left the stars out for just that purpose.
Actually never mind, as the earth is not a three dimensional object, I realize lighting the foreground side of the planet is impossible. Maybe an expansion in the future with this side of the planet would be awesome.
I think I'm too tired from work and over-thinking.
Oh yeah i probably could have shifted it back somewhat or resized the sphere and still have gotten a similar effect. There is unfortunately a lot of trial and error involved though. Due to the sheer size of the render, especially 32bit rendering, it took several hours just for one plate. The final render was *i think* the eighth render that i did, which as you can imagine took a heck of a long time. At that point, i knew it worked, i knew it looked the way i wanted and it was as balanced as i could possibly make it. It just looked right to my eye ... perhaps i have a dodgy eye.
As for the lighting, yes i can see the problem here. Instead of using another key light for your subject, have you perhaps considered using a reflector? You can place your camera between your subject and a matte reflector (grey plane) in order to bounce the sunlight back onto the subject. With the earth promo that i did for the store page, i used another building behind the camera in order to bounce the light back into the scene and provide a bit more reflection for the windows. So the direct light can act as sort of a Rim light and the reflector can act as a fill. That would be what i'd do in that sort of situation. A floor beneath your subject wouldn't hurt either, provided its out of shot.
Good idea, and once I get some sleep I would have realized that,.....eventually, lol. Yeah, I'll figure it out. I've had no problems with all the other hdri's. It is a very nice product, and appreciate you making it for all of us, and for yourself. I placed a few of the hdri's, (as a test), outside of Stonemason's 'Sci-Fi Corridor 2013' to great effect. Hoping you'll do some more some time soon. hint, hint.
Thank you for that link.
Another tip. I couldn't get the installer to setup the plugins for Paintshop Pro. What I did in the end was to just install it and copy the Nik Collection directory from Program Files\Google\ into my PlugIns\EN\ directory and Paintshop Pro can now use them.