Dumb Questions about HDRI's
Serene Night
Posts: 17,704
in The Commons
Okay, well I've been using HDRI for some time, but two things perplex me and I feel stupid for asking but...
1. Is there a way when one cannot see the HDRI to make sure the characters feet are firmly on the ground and not above the ground on the floor of the HDRI?
2. Is there a reason some HDRI do not show in iray preview mode while others do?
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Not sure I understand the first question. As long as your figure is on the ground in DS, then it is on the ground in the HDRI. Now how it looks on the HDRI surface depends on the angle of the camera and the angle of the HDRI in my experience.
As for them not showing up in the preview, make sure that the dome is active in the render settings and it should be showing. I have noticed that HDRIs don't always have the same settings in the render settings when they are applied.
I have found that when I do a close up shot of a character on the ground in HDRI's sometimes they are floating above it. If I drop the character to the ground it frequently rises above the surface of the floor making it worse.
I have draw dome enabled but.... It doesn't show in preview mode. Is there another dome I need to enable?
Environment mode - dome only and in Draw Dome - On.
I have never had the first issue, so can't help much with that, sorry.
RE character floating above gound: You may need to change the Ground Position Mode from Auto to Manual. When it is Auto, the lowest thing in your scene will be placed at the HDRI ground level. So, if you want your character sitting on the ground, and his buttocks are not flat, you will ned to use Manual and then you can move him to the level you want.
Interesting. I've not tried that. Will see how that works.
Yes, this is what does it. Drives me batty that it's set at Auto.
This has driven me nuts for sometime. Thanks for helping me figure it out!
Good. Now what are some examples of HDRIs that won't show up in Iray preview? I've never had that happen.
Probably some HDRI presets have the Draw Dome in Off. Just check in render settings-Environment. But if it´s off, then it shouldn be visible in render mode either, not just preview.
And yes, definitely characters float just a bit above the ground. It is not always obvious, but they do. Someone also advised me to set Ground Possition from auto to manual and adjust it as desired. It definitely does a difference.
You can, after you turn off Auto Ground, move you character (or rather the HRDI 'dome' actually, along the X and/or Y axi to reposition the character to another location in the dome so you can do more than just rotate the HRDI 360 degrees.
The one thing to remember about an HDRI is that it was taken with a camera with certain parameters set, particularly Focal Length and also height from the ground. If the Focal Length of the render camera is different or the height is different then it will alter the virtual ground and zooming in or out will also change how the figure appears in relation to the HDRI. Moving the camera in or out, spinning or tilting the camera also affect the position of the ground plane and also any figure in the scene and its relationship to the HDRI and where it appears in relation to the background. This also happens if an image is used as a Background in the Environment/Background slot.
This is what happens to me. The dome is on. And I can tell it works because when it renders it shows up.
What skydome are you using in that scene? What does the rendered imge look like?
It is too bright and is being washed out by the Tone Mapping settings i.e. it is overexposed..
Does that make any sense if it still renders OK?
It has been reset to default so that’s the way it loads.
It is the hd Alaskan wilderness hdri from the new winter set.
This is how it renders with the HDRI in the background. I have to fix some stuff, but... this was just the test render.
I don't own that set, so I can't check it. I did see a post from AM in another thread that says the product comes with render settings presets and camera presets. Have you tried those to see if they behave differently than what you have set up? (Or maybe that is what you are already using.)
Edit: Maybe you could email his support email address in his signature.
I tend to like my own cameras but will check it out. I am using their render settings.
That's a beautiful background. I hope you can resolve why it doesn't show up in the Iray preview. How else can you effectively position it?
There is a difference between the Preview and the Render. The rock over HIS left shoulder is in the Preview but not the render which suggest that the dome isn't big enough to cover the scene if it is a prop. Unless of course you have changed some things in the background :)
From the notes on the page for the HDRI's
Note: in the Iray Render Settings you may need to adjust "dome radius" and "ground texture scale" to match different camera settings
Which was the other thing I was going to suggest that if it is set to Finite Dome the radius might need adjusting.
Good observation on the missing rock! Could a small finite dome size make an HDRI not show up in the preview?
I've tried that and it still shows so I am running out of suggestions :)
Thanks for trying to help me.
Nothing I can do can make the HDRI show in the preview mode which is funny. I just go with whether I like the way the character's face is lit, and use a different ground. Wish I could figure out why my machine does that, but I've learned coping skills I guess....
Found this thread by accident. Sorry how do you mean you can't show the preview? If you enable the Nvidia Iray preview, the dome and lighting conditions should show and apply. Obviously there is no preview in the Texture Draw mode, because there is no skydome geometry. About the iray dome radius, that can be adjusted (along with the ground texture scale) to fit the size of your scene and camera height.
Thanks. Where is this option located?
Yeah. Those are enabled already. Too bad. I misunderstood. Nope. Nothing shows.