Self creation of HDRI - some suggestions - mini tutorial

[Micha_cg]

Hi,

the site from Wouter (http://www.aversis.be) let me remember, that since a long time I think about to post my HDRI creation technic. I'm happy to use the Vray Beta and so here my small present.

First, I don't use a chrome sphere, I use a big soup ladle from R?sle (www.roesle.de). This soup ladle are approx. a half sphere - price approx. 20,-euro for 10 cm diameter. Most you will find this kinf of ladle in design kitchen stores.

Very often I have seen that people shot photos in horizontal direction, but than a part of the horizon is missed. My new technic is to shot the image with the camera top down. So, only a part of the ground is missing, but most this can be easy retouched. For reflection/GI environments this small artefact at the ground is no problem.
My english is not the best, here an image of my tool as discription:

A small 2 MegaPixel Canon Ixus v? help me to shot the images. And here a LDR version of a retouched and tonemapped panorama shot:


Ok, the image show some distortions, but for lighting it is no problem and in reflection is will not be visible most. For high res backgrounds I use extra shots from the place. If the background is blury, than an additional high res image is not needed. I'm new at Vray and so I don't have a Vray example in the moment, here an old example with full usage of a selfmade HDRI.

Regards
Micha

[flipside]

Self creation of HDRI - some suggestions - mini tutorial

Nice micha

Does that ixus have the ability to shoot with different exposures?

The most important thing is like you have it, that the reflective object is attached to the tripod, that way your sure that it will not move relative to the camera. But on the other hand, you want to place the camera as far away from the ball as possible.

Where ae you standing when you take the pics?

[Micha_cg]

Self creation of HDRI - some suggestions - mini tutorial

My workflow with the IXUS is:

- set manual mode
- set daylight white correction
- set macro mode
- set timer to 2s or 10s
- save focus to the mirrored image
- save exposure
- now I have used the exposure correction menu and have shot from -2 ... +2 increment 1

The timer helps to avoid a camera shake blur. A longer time is good against the camera shake, but is a problem for moving objects in the environment like clouds or the sun.

Where I was?
Two way: squat beside the tripod or hide behind a tree or something other (here helps a long timer time). Also you can see, my apparatus has one slight metal fixture for the camera. I have place this fixture so, that I can good retouch it later.
Third way: some times, I was go away some steps and have hidden my behind the metal fixture. Per HDRShop and photoshop I have retouched the image.

An other cool way is, to use AHDRIA. A free tool, that shot a exposure series. But you need a notebook or PC.

http://www2.cs.uh.edu/~somalley/hdri_images.html

-Micha

[han3d]

Self creation of HDRI - some suggestions - mini tutorial

good way for hdri
then people might even share some hdri with us later