Zooming & HDRIs

[richard_rosenman]

Hi gang;

This is a somewhat silly question.

I use HDRI domelights all the time for my lighting and even for my backgrounds (although I use very, very high resolution ones so that I don't get blurry backgrounds).

Anyway, when I orbit around my scene, the HDRI domelight respects rotation and spins the HDRI accordingly. Of course, when it comes to zooming in and out, this is not the case. The HDRI background stays locked, and it makes sense why. However, this is a problem whenever you have camera zooms as it looks totally unrealistic if the background doesn't also zoom.

So what do most people here do? Do you build an actual dome object and map it with the HDRI so that it respects full 3D perspective? I have tried this but an object doesn't light the scene half as well as a domelight.

What is the typical workflow for this?

Thanks,
-Richard

[^Lele^]

Use the dome for lighting and add a mapped sphere for direct and indirect viewing, with a lightMtl and the same HDRI (in uv space, ofc, not environment projection.).
You'll want to make sure it doesn't emit or receive GI, so to not add double lighting (and likely noise.).
That's doable via wrapper material, or the usual V-Ray properties on the object.
p.s.: this will still look wrong, how much depending on zoom amount and HDR content, as the parallax between the various image elements won't be there.
The exact, but laborious, method is to make cards of the various elements positioned in 3d space (analogous to how it's done in post).

[kosso_olli]

So what do most people here do? Do you build an actual dome object and map it with the HDRI so that it respects full 3D perspective? I have tried this but an object doesn't light the scene half as well as a domelight.

There are two (convoluted) thread for this:

https://forums.chaosgroup.com/forum/...orona-vs-v-ray
https://forums.chaosgroup.com/forum/...rrectly-scaled

The solution right now is to either switch to Corona, or remodeling the environment and projecting the HDRI to it. The latter is extremely cumbersome for such a simple task any other renderer is handling quite well.

[richard_rosenman]

I see.

That is a shame indeed - for something so simple. I guess I'll have to start building geometry domes...

-Richard