List of sites with free HDRi

Comments

• mjc1016 Posts: 15,001

  June 2015 edited December 1969

  reserved for expansion
• SixDs Posts: 2,384

  June 2015 edited December 1969

  Thanks Mjc. Its always nice when someone takes the time and makes the effort to pull together information scattered about and present it in one organized and consolidated fashion. Excellent job in doing so. Thank you once again.
• mjc1016 Posts: 15,001

  June 2015 edited December 1969

  The scary thing...more than half those links came from places I bookmarked long ago and the rest came from threads on places like BlenderArtist that listed links to them. Only one or two came from the Iray threads...I know I posted several of them to some of those threads, but it's time to go a bit more 'comprehensive'...

  And Cho, can you maybe add this to the list of lists?
• Chohole Posts: 33,604

  June 2015 edited December 1969

  maybe :coolsmirk:
• SickleYield Posts: 7,629

  June 2015 edited December 1969

  Thank you for the list!

  I've found the ones from this site to be helpful, and they are licensed for commercial use::

  http://rift3d.com/11-free-hdr-sets-for-commercial-use/
• mjc1016 Posts: 15,001

  June 2015 edited December 1969

  Those are the same ones as on the HDRI-hub link I already have...
• mCasual Posts: 4,604

  June 2015 edited June 2015

  it could be interesting to make a spherical renderer in daz studio
  you could place an ambient sphere here as the sun,
  a simplified tree there
  a floor

  then the script would automatically render 91 image tiles
  just a matter of animating a camera, 1 aim per frame, then render it as a series of images

  more like IBL, than real HDR but hey

  3delight can probably do it in hdr though

  personally i almost always use jpegs because i don't attempt photorealism very often

  though i noticed that the few times i used the HDR environments the results did look more pleasing

  
  and Thanks for the list !!! :)

  the ground and top-of-the-sky renders would ideally need some tapering effect

  

  

  floor.jpg

  512 x 512 - 217K

  Post edited by mCasual on June 2015
• MilosGulan Posts: 1,950

  June 2015 edited December 1969

  Thank You, though I am still not sure what is HDRI. That is like a background image, right? just been reading trough this http://akvis.com/en/hdrfactory-tutorial/howwork/high-dynamic-range.php and this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-dynamic-range_imaging
• mjc1016 Posts: 15,001

  June 2015 edited December 1969

  Those are pretty decent descriptions of what an HDR image is...but not really what it is used for.

  Yes, it can just be a backdrop...but that's kind like using a Porsche to run down the corner market to pick up some milk and bread. Due to the fact that a good, high quality HDR image has all the necessary information about what the light was like when the image was taken, it can be used to reproduce that lighting when used with a renderer that understands how to do that. Basically, that means most current renderers. So, using one, especially if it has enough dynamic range, means that all the primary lighting of your scene is taken care of...and in some cases, that's all the lighting needed. Also with some renderers, this also means things like 'environmental' effects...'bounce' light, etc are all calculated from the information gathered from the image. In film work, they are often used to match CGI scenes/effects to the filmed parts of the scenes.

  Low to mid range images can provide 'basic' lighting information, but often don't have enough to give accurate color rendition or shadows. So they will need some sort of supplemental lighting. The mid to high range (and there are some very high range images) will provide accurate color, shadows and if the right 'shaders' are used (or it's a built in function of the renderer) very accurate reflections.

  File size mostly doesn't matter...large low range images are just like small low range images, in the amount of lighting information that they can provide. But in general, a larger file size (not pixel resolution) has more information than a smaller file size. Actual image size (pixel) also doesn't matter much, unless the image is also doing backdrop duty. This can be both good and bad...but it is somewhat dependent on the renderer. In some renderers it is more efficient to use a small (pixel size) image for the lighting information and a large hi-res jpg (a low dynamic range format) for backdrop duties. For other renderers, using 1 large (pixel size) high range image for both lighting and backdrop duties is more efficient.
• Pendraia Posts: 3,591

  June 2015 edited December 1969

  Thanks this list will be useful when I start to get my head around Iray...
• MilosGulan Posts: 1,950

  June 2015 edited December 1969

  Thank You very much, now I understand much better.
• ben98120000 Posts: 469

  June 2015 edited December 1969

  cgskies.com
  Each sky have a free non-commercial 3k x 1.5k jpg and 1000x500 hdr sample for download (350+ of them). So probably ok for light but not so much for background image (unless you use DOF).
• mjc1016 Posts: 15,001

  June 2015 edited December 1969

  ben98120000 said:

  cgskies.com
  Each sky have a free non-commercial 3k x 1.5k jpg and 1000x500 hdr sample for download (350+ of them). So probably ok for light but not so much for background image (unless you use DOF).

  I'd forgotten about this site...thanks.

  I have a couple of the full skies from magazine disks/downloads.
• RAMWolff Posts: 10,146

  June 2015 edited December 1969

  Can you recommend any of these links for doing night time star shine shots?? All the HDR's I've used for day time just over light the scene and I have ONE HDR for star shine but it's still over lighting the scene. Seems odd, shouldn't so maybe it's my settings. Still trying to get a handle on this whole iRay thing. I need a night time set of settings to study is what I really need! lol
• mjc1016 Posts: 15,001

  June 2015 edited December 1969

  RAMWolff said:

  Can you recommend any of these links for doing night time star shine shots?? All the HDR's I've used for day time just over light the scene and I have ONE HDR for star shine but it's still over lighting the scene. Seems odd, shouldn't so maybe it's my settings. Still trying to get a handle on this whole iRay thing. I need a night time set of settings to study is what I really need! lol

  I've found that there are very few good, free night/starscape HDRIs.

  Hdr-hub has a nice night time one...that's free, but it's a city scene. I think they have some pay for night ones, too...but I haven't looked at their paid products in a while.
• RAMWolff Posts: 10,146

  June 2015 edited December 1969

  Thanks. Heading over to take a look at the Hrd-hub!
• mCasual Posts: 4,604

  June 2015 edited December 1969

  RAMWolff said:

  Can you recommend any of these links for doing night time star shine shots?? All the HDR's I've used for day time just over light the scene and I have ONE HDR for star shine but it's still over lighting the scene. Seems odd, shouldn't so maybe it's my settings. Still trying to get a handle on this whole iRay thing. I need a night time set of settings to study is what I really need! lol

  note that there's a setting in IRay to reduce the intensity of the environment lighting, yesterday for my jpg-to-hdr environment i had to set it to 0.5 instead of the default 1.0
• RAMWolff Posts: 10,146

  June 2015 edited December 1969

  Thanks!

  So does DS do anything with the ibl files that come in these zips or just forget them??
• vwrangler Posts: 4,811

  June 2015 edited June 2015

  RAMWolff said:

  Thanks. Heading over to take a look at the Hrd-hub!

  A question: what do you have, and what do you need it to do?

  What I've done for night images in a few -- only one that's been posted, and in that one, the window reflection is so strong that you can't see the backdrop anyway -- is that I use the HDR/EXR/sIBL as the environment map, set the intensity, and then if it has one, use the backplate for the environment backdrop. (Window menu -} Panes } Environment. I docked that sucker underneath the render settings tab, myself, because otherwise I forget it exists.) Change dropdown at the top of the pane from None to Backdrop. Slot image into the channel that appears.

  Depending on what comes with the HDR that you use for lighting, it may have either a separate backplate or some other type of image that you can slot into the backdrop channel. That will give you the appearance you need without trying to force issues with the environment dome itself. HDR-Hub has one sIBL and one HDR night scene, different citty scenes, both of which (I *think*) include backplates. Neither of the environment dome images resolves well initially on the drawn dome; you have to fiddle with settings, whereas the backplates, for the most part, just work.

  Skydome images and images designed to be backplates are NOT HDR images, so they're less likely to make Iray choke on the image size. (with the possible exception of TIFs, if they're uncompressed. Most TIFs you'll come across will have LZW or other compression applied, though.)

  For some night skies, I've used the TIFs that came with the original BWC Skies by Sedor. There's one with stars and one without. I've also used, as mentioned, the backplates from the two HDR-Hub night scenes, although I'm not especially fond of them. Depending on what they are and their resolution, skydome images can work pretty well for environment backdrops, without doing the other fiddling you have to do to get skydomes and some environment images to show up otherwise.

  Hope this helps.

  Post edited by vwrangler on June 2015
• RAMWolff Posts: 10,146

  June 2015 edited December 1969

  OK.. now... in English please?? LOL I think I understand but keep in mind I'm a total newb for this stuff so hdr, ibl and backplate stuff is pretty alien to me right now.... not as much as it was a couple of weeks ago but still pretty much so. The zip I did download does indeed come with backplates. It's some night city scene set.

  So does DS make use of the ibl files or do I just ignore those in the zip file?
• mjc1016 Posts: 15,001

  June 2015 edited December 1969

  The ibl is just a 'settings' file...no, DS doesn't use it. You have to do the settings the old-fashioned way, by hand.

  Backplate---typically one of the jpgs, usually labeled as such. There's also usually 2 hdr files in the sIBL zips. One is an 'environment'...it's a lower resolution/size, often blurred for lighting use only. The other is a higher res image and is often labeled 'ref'...that one is useful for both lighting and reflections...and if you want 1 image to 'do it all', and aren't need a detailed backdrop...it will work for that, too.
• vwrangler Posts: 4,811

  June 2015 edited December 1969

  mjc1016 said:

  The ibl is just a 'settings' file...no, DS doesn't use it. You have to do the settings the old-fashioned way, by hand.

  Backplate---typically one of the jpgs, usually labeled as such. There's also usually 2 hdr files in the sIBL zips. One is an 'environment'...it's a lower resolution/size, often blurred for lighting use only. The other is a higher res image and is often labeled 'ref'...that one is useful for both lighting and reflections...and if you want 1 image to 'do it all', and aren't need a detailed backdrop...it will work for that, too.

  Huh. Thank you; I didn't know about the REF HDR files myself. The night scenes at HDR-Hub include REF HDR files, it turns out; I just hadn't tried them. The detail is actually a bit ... extreme and close-up, though.
• RAMWolff Posts: 10,146

  June 2015 edited December 1969

  OK. Good to know, thanks so much for the info. Thanks for the edjumicatjun! ;-)~
• takezo_3001 Posts: 1,921

  July 2015 edited December 1969

  Thanks for this list you beautiful, beautiful grinch, you! d-(^-^)-b
• mjc1016 Posts: 15,001

  July 2015 edited August 2015

  Updating the main list may be a problem for a while.

  Until then, here is a new item I'm adding;

  Viewers

  http://www.irfanview.com/ (This is a general image viewer that supports many formats, including HDR and EXR...)

  http://www.xnview.com/en/xnviewmp/

  Post edited by mjc1016 on August 2015
• Rae134 Posts: 49

  July 2015

  Anyone know of any Underwater HDRi's?

  I know Dosch (not sure if thats how its spelt) has some but I don't have $99 to spend :D (and my luck it would be US $ which would work out to be way more!).
• mjc1016 Posts: 15,001

  July 2015 edited July 2015

  I don't know of any other than the Dosch ones (which, if you've looked, aren't cheap...).

  This site has some nice underwater panos, but they aren't HDRis usable for lighting, as they are.

  http://catlinseaviewsurvey.zenfolio.com/masterfolder_safe  (not sure if they are usable commercially, but they do say if you use an image, it must be credited to them)

   

  Post edited by mjc1016 on July 2015
• Rae134 Posts: 49

  July 2015

  Thanks mjc1016. yeah, would love those Dosch one but way out of my price range at the moment. :D

  I'll take a look at those panos but was really wanting it as a light source. :)
• mjc1016 Posts: 15,001

  July 2015

  Yeah...what I dug up was a lot of referrences to the Dosch ones, how difficult it is/would be to shoot some under water and 'just render some out in Vue or Terragen'. 

  The Vue/Terragen option is probably the best bet, outside of the Dosch ones...but if you don't have either program, then it's not really.  Blender may be able to render out HDRIs, but it's 'scene' set up is a lot more complicated and involved than doing the same thing in a program dedicated to that type of work.  Bryce isn't really an option, though it could do the scenery part.  There aren't really any free/OpenSource alternatives to Vue or Terragen (at least feature/maturity levels).   And technically, while you could 'paint' one in something like Photoshop, it would, without a lot of time and effort, look, painted.

   

   
• Rae134 Posts: 49

  July 2015

  I'm just learning Daz so I really don't want to learn anything else at the moment :D

  I was really just wanting it for lighting first and backplate secondary. :)