'scaling' hdri? car looks like a toy...

[emartin8907]

Hi,

I have a car I am trying to render in a hdri dome. my car (very heavy CAD geometry) is 1:1 scaled correctly, the environment looks gigantic though (car looks like matchbox toy on the ground)

I've tried playing with Ground Radius, increasing it and decreasing it. All this did was stretch the heck out of the ground. Turning Ground On of course helped with, well, turning the ground on. but the car looks like a toy.

Is there a way I can just 'scale' the entire hdri to fit my geometry?

Or should I do this a different way, something other than the VrayPlaceEnvTex node?

Would like to be able to project the hdri onto some simple geometry (boxes for buildings etc) but can't find any good tutorials for this (I think this is best done in Nuke?) In the meantime I would like to at least be able to scale the dome better in Maya.

[vlado]

Can you show what it looks like now (maybe with something other than the car itself)?

Best regards,
Vlado

[Zdravko.Keremidchiev]

This might depend on the HDRI as well. If you send us the scene to support@chaosgroup.com we will have a look. You can replace the car with a box if you want.

[beenyweenies]

Without seeing images of what you're experiencing, my guess is that the HDRI you're using was not shot at a proper scale for the subject matter. The scale represented in the HDRI needs to match the scale of the shot you're setting up, or it will never work right.

[emartin8907]

hello, sorry for such late reply. Other projects came up but this one is now in my teams hands with 2 week deadline.

here are some pictures;

ground off: (no stretching but object is floating/ doesn't stay in same place as you rotate around)


Ground On, default radius of 1000. ground size is too large, car looks like a toy. also there is stretching starting to happen.


Ground on, radius of 150. Ground size is looking better but stretching is getting pretty bad/ unacceptable.


other angle, with radius at 150 again.


angle 2 with Ground Off. No stretching, but car floats around/ doesn't stay put.




The project is going to be a turntable of a car in the environment (360 spin). I made this cube the same scale as the car, which I cannot show as it's a new car. That is the cars shadow though so that is the correct scale. The car is in maya at 1:1 scale.

I will be lighting the car in hdrlight studio and rendering the car separate from background of course, compositing this all in nuke. My concern is how to render the dome out without stretching. We are exploring solutions in Nuke as well. Also looking into projecting to simple geometry in Maya. Any input is appreciated. We also have Max/vray in house- not sure if it offers better tools for scaling/ positioning hdris to avoid the stretching?

Wish we could go back to the location with a laser scanner https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjGn...ature=youtu.be unfortunately we just have the one hdr to work with.

[Neilg]

You could create some basic low poly geometry of the scene and paint the hdri onto it in mari. You dont have a scan to model over a point cloud but it's also not very complicated - you'rs making road, sidewalk, and some basic blocks for the buildings and large objects that you'll notice are closer in the reflection (looks like only one light pole and some hedges)

https://www.fxguide.com/fxguidetv/fx...-mari-and-hdr/

[emartin8907]

Very familiar with Scott Metzgers work- I never considered trying it without the point cloud though. I suppose you are right- if I just model the simple shapes I might be able to make this work in Mari. Unfortunately we do not have Mari in house, but I could take a stab at this at home and if it works we could maybe get a seat in house. thank you for the idea!

[Neilg]

They're pretty good with giving extended production trials - I wanted to know if it could help us with realtime/oculus work and ended up speaking to someone who gave us a longer full production version so we could really test it and figure it out on the appropriate scale.
It actually didnt work for us, but they were very helpful in allowing us to find that out