I’d like to introduce HDR Sets, a new HDRI source my colleague Raphael Boeckle and I have been working on during the last year.
We provide a library of HDR Sets that bundle HDR panoramas with HDR backplates and matched 3D cameras. All prepared as carefully adjusted sIBL sets.
It is particularly interesting for Vray for Maya users, since we provide a loader script for maya that will setup everything: Lighting, cameras and backplates.
So in addition to what you get using sIBL, the camera and backplate setup is automated, too.
Here is an introductory video that shows the basic ideas of HDR Sets:
Make sure to watch it with sound, to get all information.
And here are some demo renderings:
Additional demo renderings are available in our gallery.
Do I sense a grain of irony here?
While car rendering is definitely an important application, we are not focused exclusively on that.
We already provide one airstrip HDR-Set which might be interesting for photorealistic rendering of aircraft. Additional Sets in that area are planned
Hi,
Well, a lot of HDR stuff is dedicated to car rendering
Very good news if you provide and plan to provide more airstrip HDR sets ! I would be definitely interested
Very good news if you provide and plan to provide more airstrip HDR sets ! I would be definitely interested
We appreciate it I’ll give you a note as soon as additional stuff is comming!
Information like that is very useful to us. If you have any specific ideas on HDR-Sets you would like to see in future or need exclusively, just give us a note.
As for a little update on what we’re doing right now:
We recently released an updated version of all HDR Sets, adding the “ENV_DOMELIGHT.exr” which is specifically tweaked to produce best results with a single-domelight lighting approach.
Some words to explain the historical reasons for that: the HDR Sets Maya Script is using a rect light approach to generate direct lighting information based on values stored in an .ibl file. In that case, the reflection HDRI obviously does need HDR values, but those values don’t need to exceed insanely high values (above 1000 for example), it can actually introduce problems more likely. Now with the approach of using a single domelight to generate everything, it’s a different story since a sun ball for example does need insanely high values to accuratly reproduce direct lighting through a domelight. Thats why we added a separate HDR map to make that happen. It’s actually precisely tweaked to match the original result, that’s produced with the Maya Script’s “splitted components” approach (rect lights, GI env, refl env). With that, it’s straight forward to transfer the setup to any app that supports vray. The updated versions are up and ready for download.
We’re also close to releasing the next version of our Maya Script, which is optimized for vray 3.0 , better support for maya 2015 as well as introducing some new features.
Finally two images, which has been rendered by André Cantarel with 3DS Max and Vray, using the single domelight with the “ENV_DOMELIGHT.exr”.
We’re glad to announce the release of HDR Sets GUI 1.2!
The HDR Sets GUI is an sIBL loader script for Maya and Vray, specifically designed to speed up working with material that includes plates and matched 3D cameras. The new version adds an easy way to handle plate specific asset placement within a single maya scene. Furthermore the setup is now better optimized for vray 3.0 and Maya 2015:
Shots Tab added: The shots tab is a way to setup a specific renderlayer for each plate, allowing the user to make shot specific overrides like position adjustmens etc. It’s a great way to place an asset into several camera perspectives from multiple HDR Sets within a single maya scene.
Setup is optimized for Vray 3.0
Domelight for reflections: While primary lighting is cast through vray rect lights, a domelight is now always used to cast reflections and therefore make use of multi importance sampling.
Optimized dimension handling: The light setup is now compatible with a wider range of scene dimensions.
As soon as an HDR Set is loaded to the scene, double-clicking a plate in the plates tab will switch the active viewport to the according camera.
Image planes in Maya 2015 now work as expected.
A “Copy to Sourceimages” button in the options tab will copy all files of the currently loaded HDR Sets to the current maya project’s sourceimages folder and relink file paths accordingly.
Just a quick pointer to our recently published HDR Sets GUI tutorial. It’s demonstrating the process of staging an asset into several shots within a single maya scene, producing an entire series of images to pick from. Besides being a step by step intro to the script, it’s a detailed demo of the HDR Sets concept. The HDR Sets GUI 1.3 is now fully compatible with maya 2016.
here is a quick update for the look dev and lighting guys
we recently had a lot of requests for a solution to access exclusive lighting information of specific HDR Sets for CG lighting and look development purposes.
That’s why we’ve now added the Look Development Access, which provides instant access to our entire library for look development and CG lighting.
All backplates are included as downsized versions as well, so it’s perfectly possible to drop an asset into lots of backgrounds and validate it’s shading within photo real context.
Hi
Does this support 2016.5 new Render Setup?
Also can you make your own setup (HDR, Plates, etc) so I go on set and get all my HDR plus different plates, if so how would setup all that in the GUI? any tutorials?
the new render setup in maya 2016.5 is currently not supported, however this just affects some parts of the HDR Sets GUI. You can’t setup multiple HDR Sets in one maya scene or use the shots tab with the new system right now. We’re looking into this.
Yes, you can create your own setups! The system is based on sIBL and you can check the .ibl file format specs here. We added additional camera information to our setups that is read by the HDR Sets GUI for the plate setup.. you can simply open up an .ibl file with a standard text editor to get familiar with the data.
Can you elaborate a bit on the “Procedural Macbeth Chart / ColorChecker” features? Is it procedurally generated Color Chart? Usually the chart was shot with the HDR so very interesting to see a “procedural” one.
sure, a real color chart is shot with the HDR panorama and every plate, which helps to match those together. But then it’s also very usefull to have a digital Macbeth chart, that you can render along with digital grey and chrome balls in your lighting setup. It’s kind of the “final check” that it really is as close as possible to the real reference.
We didn’t use this technique right from the beginning - for the first Sets we only had grey and chrome balls on Set - but at some point we added the color charts to the process.
The procedural ColorChecker feature automatically creates geometry and shaders, based on linear RGB values of a color chart. It’s just handy to have it at your fingertips for quick lighting checks or to render it next to an asset while presenting look dev iterations.
Awesome! Will check them out for sure. Is there a sample set that is shot lately that has the color chart shot with the HDR so I can test out the workflow?
the free sample HDR Set does not contain a color chart. They are available up on request for the newer ones, however they are not “required” because our setups are already calibrated - the “check” is already done.
The HDR Sets GUI is not limited to our content.. you can use it to manage your own library and use the digital color chart for calibration purposes.
