HDR & HDRI Lighting - Is this Exterior or Interior Lighting
Fauvist
Posts: 2,219
HDR & HDRI Lighting - Is this Exterior or Interior Lighting? There's a lot of sets of HDR or HDRI lighting products around. The promotional images often show a human figure inside the interior of a room, which is supposedly lighted only by an HDR or HDRI (what's the difference between HDR and HDRI anyway?) I'm not talking about the interiors that are part of the HDRI itself, but interiors that are constructed out of 3D models of walls and furniture. - and the HDRI is lighting this interior. How does the light from the HDRI get through the walls into the rooms to light them up? And not the products that have a special camera that sees through walls allowing the light in.
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I'm also not sure of the difference between HDR and HDRi but I do use them to light interiors. The way I do it is to hide walls and ceilings not in the camera view. I know that this messes around with shadows and light distribution but the saving in time compared to emmision lights (including Ghost Lights) is substatial. I render stories of over a hundred images each and I can't tolerate long render times (bearing in mind that I now have a gloriously fast RTX 3090 which has been an absolute game changer over my previous GTX 1070).
There are also cameras (sometimes known as X-Ray cameras) you can make or buy which have Irat Section Panes attached to automatically hide any surfaces out of camera shot.
The I stands for image - HDRI or HDR Image.
Are you sure they are interiors, not HDRIs showing interiors? If they are older sets they may be using 3Delight, in which the walls could have been set not to cast shadows.
This Paper Tiger PA product is sold here. It appears to be a room. https://www.daz3d.com/prism-hdri-lighting
Ah, sorry, I didn't realise that you were asking about a specific product. If it's anything like Paper Tiger's other lighting sets, they don't include an HDR image of an interior - they just provide lighting. I have a few of those sets and use them as I described in my previous post. By the way, Paper Tiger also includes the so-called X-Ray camera with some products (though I'm not sure if that is true of those sold by DAZ - I bought my sets before the move from Rendo).
The Prism promos show figures surrounded by 3d props in a 3D room lit by the HDRI product. Either walls were hidden or Paper Tiger's X-ray camera (a Daz Studio camera with section planes parented to it) to let the light shine through. Section plabes are one of those things than anyone who needs to light a room should understand.
OK, I own Paper Tiger's X-ray Camera with one of her light sets - the lens is only 50mm - it doesn't work if you change the focal length of the lens. I bought this today, which has the section planes https://www.daz3d.com/interior-light-pro-for-filament-and-iray. I've just been confused because I thought there was some way to get one of those HDR or HDRI lights INSIDE a closed room. But now, I take it, that isn't possible. Is there some other product or way to get Section Planes?
I'm told that you can attach (parent) your own IRay Section Planes to any camera but I didn't try it because I had the Paper Tiger camera. More often than not, however, I just load a couple of Section Planes and position them without bothering to parent them to the camera. So long as they are out of shot it doesn't really matter.
If you adjust the lens of the X-ray camera, you do have to move the section planes....
How do you move the section planes? Do they show up on a slider somewhere?
They are actual props. If you load Paper Tiger's HDRI X-Ray Camera, for example, and expand it in the scene, you can see the indivual parts which can be selected and moved like any other prop.
OK, great. Thank you! I'm going to try it.
Good primer on section planes:
I use IG Photographer's Toolbox: 35mm Cameras | Daz 3D almost exclusively. But sometimes use Tiger's Xray cam. I child it to my 35mm camera and zero it's transform to match. You can also use the xray cam as the non main camera to make nifty slices in scenes.