HDRI Volume 1.0

[richard_rosenman]

Well, after extensive experimenting and testing I finally have my first set available to the public:

http://www.richardrosenman.com/software/

(Please forgive the shameless self promotion)

-Richard

[gafl]

hi richard !

Nice work !

It's a bit long to see the page for my 56 k modem, but it's cool.

4000*4000 is very impressive...It may be long to turn them into hdr
format.
I have tried to do it too, but I can't find a ball...If you have any,tell me.
A thing I don't understand is, People need their own environment,
so such images should be worth if you only use them to light the scene
but not to see them in the Background.So the resolution as you do
may be not as usefull as you thing.
This is just a question !
I thing your images are very usefull, nevertheless.

Bye !
Gael

[jujubee]

That's awesome- and it's such a good deal in comparison to the other libraries out there. Great images too.

[richard_rosenman]

Hi Gael;

You are correct in saying that most of the time people use their own environments thus not requiring such high resolution HDR images. However, when you work with film, you usually end up working with a minimum rendering resolution of 2048 all the way to 4000 pixels width (even higher for IMAX). It is in these instances that high resolution HDR images are important so that even if they are used only for reflections or image-based lighting, the maps will hold up.

Otherwise, you will get a very nice, sharp film resolution render with an ugly, stretched (blurred) reflection.

And of course, should one decide to use any of these HDR images for a background, it will hold up as well (although not necessarily for film res...)

-Richard

[snorthul]

Great stuff Richard. I will hopefully be purchasing this from you once I get some employment.

One question I have for you though.. I know that you can get gazing balls from a bunch of different places, but I was wondering if you knew anything about the environment balls they use on some films, like Star wars.

It is like a gazing ball on a stick, but one half of the ball is flat grey and the other half is completely reflective. I've had no luck on google and was wondering if you might know of these.

Also, if you used a ball, what kind did you use?

[jujubee]

I'm not Richard but I can answer a few questions. I've bought a stainless steel ball off of mcmaster-carr and it doesn't produce the cleanest images results for a background. Almost always blurry whenever trying to superimpose multiple images over one another. I actually get a brighter/cleaner results (minus a couple imperfections) off of christmas tree bulb. There's not much of a difference between a sphere or a sphere with the back half of it cut-off. The only thing I can think of is that it is easier to transport and doesn't roll around on you when you put it on the ground. If you look online, some people use different techniques than using reflective balls to get their HDRIs... On the other hand the Uffuzi is made from a ball from Mcmaster-carr. How they got it so clean is beyond me. Must have abeen alot of trial and error or one steady hand when pressing the shutter...

[richard_rosenman]

There's also something else to add to that.

While on set, I usually take with me a chrome ball (usually a gazing ball) and a matte-white ball.

After each shot, I have the DOP shoot for us one plate with the chrome ball, and another with the white matte ball.

The chrome ball, when it comes through the film transfer, gives us a lot more information about the lighting set-up since it shows where all othe studio lights were set up.

The matte white ball is even better because it tells us the intensity, color, contrast, ambience, etc, of the lighting enviroment. Take a look at the Robaxacet shoot ball:

http://www.richardrosenman.com/galle...ghting_ref.jpg

This one image tells me almost anything I need to know abou the scene. I know that the cool lights are coming from the left and the warms from the right. I know the cools are more overpowering than the warms, as well as more intense. I can see the direction of where on the left and where on the right each light is, as depicted by the shading. (The blue light is coming from top left and the warm light from bottom right.

Anyways, it's a bit off-topic from this thread but it can show you how much information you can derive from these chrome and matte balls.


-Richard