I have made a pair of HDRI studio umbrella images to use mapped to VrayLights. I photographed a studio strobe and umbrella setup and created an HDRI of it. It does not have the world’s longest exposure range, but in my tests it seems to work pretty well, gives a pretty realistic hardness to the shadow, and gives a nice realistic reflection. I have putzed around with them in Maxwell render and they worked okay with that too.
There is a neutral version and a warm version - they look like this:
These are just quick tonemapped and lores jpg versions for reference, but if you want the 2K HDRI versions (not huge, but big enough) just PM me. I’m not posting the links because I’m more interested in sharing them with registered users.
Preisler: Just sent you a PM. The images are about 2K and the umbrella in reality is 42" across the widest points, and the bell reflector on the strobe head is 9" in diameter.
Running some more hi-res tests with these maps in VrayLights, but here’s a lo-res of how they are working out. This if 4 umbrellas and one softbox (also image mapped). Working quite nicely I think.
Sorry - should have labeled it: the largest one that is overhead/front has a combination of a gradient ramp and softbox image mapped, and the other 3 are the umbrellas. The backlight uses the warm one, the other two are the neutral one.
Thanks for sending me the HDRIs.
I made a test how much they influence the scene compared to a normal vray light without texture.
Its really making the scene look better in “Studio” type scenes if you have reflective objects.
You have to be careful not to make the background to bright,
otherwise you can see the dark edges of the HDRIs.
How are you guys mapping these? We tried using the VRay HDRI and dragging that into the VRay light texture but that doesn’t reflect the map.
However, if we bring it in as a bitmap and drag it into the light texture, it works ok. However, we don’t have the HDRI options you get in the VRay HDRI material.
I just use the bitmap loader as I haven’t needed the HDRI functions from the VrayHDRI map. Pop it in the light and you can use the Output value to pump the brightness or just use the light intensity. Works fine for me that way.
You can set the gamma when you load it in the Max bitmap loader, just manually override it, but it will adjust your contrast too, which maybe good or bad I guess.
Thanks for the tip.