Questions about HDRI's

I know it's probably very, very hard to do, but some sort of night scene would be really exciting. You rarely see those (for a good reason I imagine).

Aah yeah this is good. Yeah super hard to control, but at least I can make sure to shoot during cloudy days (and hope it won’t rain) :D

I know you're sort of at the mercy of the weather, but I really want more cloudy sun HDRIs that produce brighter whites and softer shadows. A good example is 1313 from PG-skies, the sun isn't completely covered so it still produces some direct lighting.

PG and Jorgen Herland are good sources to model after in terms of naming conventions, location, time of day, sun angle, etc.

c widd

I can only agree, the ground makes a lot of difference. All my coming High-Res HDRI's will have ground. :-)

I'm honestly not sure my process generates a fully "correct" result either, as there are so many variables in play. I've been using X-rite's own program "ColorChecker Camera Calibration" which creates a profile unique for that set of images, which I've then applied in Camera Raw. I'd say the point of having high res HDRI's is mainly for visible background. It's nice to know that you can use the HDRI as visible exterior with great sharpness even in 5k-images and know that the view is perfectly in tune with the lighting :-)

Key feature for me is a ground. Many hdris have sky and black bottom stripe which is not natural. I tested almost all latest hdris placed here and all are great regarding natural feeling !

I've been creating some HDRI's myself with good results (I followed Greg Zaal's tut). The only thing I couldn't get right was the calibration card, the colors just seemed off a little bit. Are you using Lightroom to proces the photo's? Lightroom does something weird to the colors as well. A video about the steps you take would be interesting to me. I also wonder what the point is of having ultra high res HDRI's. Having high res clouds is nice but not that important. As long as the backplate images are high quality, I would say. Btw I noticed your sun is weirdly clipped, did you use an ND filter?

Joep Swagemakers

True. Or, I guess technically it's possible but not with ordinary gear. Even with a strong ND filter, the smallest aperture and the fastest shutter speed the A7R3 can provide, it's still not enough to get a "dark" sun. I'm sure with some fancy gear it's possible. In my case I do what I believe most other people does, just a local exposure compensation in the HDRI, and comparing the rendered shadows with the shadows in the original images, to get a similar result.

Could you share your process of how you isolate the sun from the sky and adjust the sun intensity to provide a true intensity? Or do you usually supplement the hdri sun with an Fstorm sun? I recal Kim Amland mentioned that it's impossible to capture the true sun intensity in an hdri.

Thank you, this is very valuable input and I can perfectly relate. We manually added ground and buildings to our CG-Source HDRI's for this reason. However, distance is a problem as HDRI's are always at an indefinite distance, and they are spherical so any buildings my look bent in view. However, I've been meaning to see if projection mapping o the HDRI solves this issue. Definitely an experiment for today :-)

In the current HDRI, many lack the HDRI surrounding buildings. However, many of the actual projects are surrounded by buildings. Of course, this is a problem that may be very complicated. I have watched your Los Angeles project. Your handling method is very good, but There are very few such HDRIs. I have seen the two HDRIs in the 70m² of BBB3viz. They are not put together. If they are perfectly put together, it would be better. Of course, this is just my own opinion. I look forward to your latest creation.