Hdri Lighting Blender

[Alysa Guillama]

Youcould try increasing samples for the lighting, and any residual noise can be cleared by increasing Samples and AA Samples. For these kinds of hdri you just have to accept it will take longer to obtain a clean render.

I know this conversation has been done many times before. But I always learn so much from people's opinions and why they favour certain lighting sets or HDRIs over others. I thought maybe to update the conversation and find out if there are any newer products out there that are people's 'go to', or do they find their tried and tested favourites still hold their own? Personaly, I am most fond of the BOSS Pro Light Set for Portraits & Promos ( -pro-light-set-for-portraits-promos ) and use it for many of my renders. It is usually my 'go to' because of its versatility and functionality. I know the set-ups provided are meant to be tuned for optimum performance, but I love moving things around to get some amazing lighting effects. I must admit I really don't like setting up lights. I find it tedious. I'd rather have many lights appear at the click of a button and then just adjust as needed. I also find the Iray Ghost Light and Probe Kits by KindredArts to be a godsend and use them in abundance ( ).

For Iray, I'll have to break it down into types. For exteriors, there's no doubt that Dimension Theories Skies of Iradiance bundle is the set that I've USED the most. It's just a good, all around basic kit of everything you need from Day to Night and what's in between. For interiors - some will say this is a cheat since they're not really a stand-alone set, but it's got to be Kindred Arts' Iray Probe and Ghost light sets. I always try to light my interiors practically, using light emitting props like lamps, windows, computermonitors, etc,wheneer possible, and these little gems are constant lifesavers when everything is almost perfect except for the amount of fill. If you want the name of an actual HDRI set, then Colm Jackson's Render Studio HDR is a great set that covers most needs.

All that said, my experience has been that there are very few BAD lighting sets being sold out there, but none of them are perfect for every situation... which is why I've picked up a copuple of hundred different sets over the years.

Inane Glory and Elianeck for light sets and mesh lights also those by DimensionTheory, for HDRIs Orestes Graphics or DT's, but I do find some of DT's HDRIs give hard shadows which personall I'm not too found of.

I use Painter's Lights a lot but not much point recommending them as they have been removed from the store. I've just started using some Paper Tiger sets (Rendo) which are proving very useful and versatile.

My favorite Ligh set is just the plain 3 point basic light I set up for all scenes 3delight and opengl. For Iray it is a homemade HDRI made of the background scene with the close stuff kept and the distant stuff out of focus and part of the HDRI. I should add this is really not a true HDRI but a Photoshop fake HDRI light created to speed up renders of sets that I render often. My problem with commerical HDRI lights is that the author of them makes the background so you have to use that. For beach and highway scenes these HDRI's are fine but I can't always find something to work with interiors spaces so I use Photoshop to fake the lights and speed up renders. Also I do composite everything in Photoshop or if you don't want to pay for it GIMP.

has some amazing FREE HDRIs mixed in with some more 'typical' ones. Definitely worth a look, and you have a variety of settings/locations to choose from. As mentioned, the HDRIs are free, but donations to 'the cause', while certainly not required, are appreciated.

It's usage case is very specific and limited in scope, but I'm hoping that Aako does a few other planets along these lines. The other 'planets' products in the Daz store are nice, but this one in particular is just exceptional for what it does. I love that you can rotate the 'sun & stars' hdri, hence changing the shape of the 'phase' shadow from a thin crescent to a full sphere.

I also need to figure out the 'viewport trick' Aako uses where the viewport is rotated 90 degrees. I didn't know you could do that with the Daz viewport. It's not something I'd use often at all, but it's interesting to know about nonetheless.

He's done the Earth as well. I'd be pretty excited if Aako did a couple of the more interesting Gas Planet moons, like Enceledas, Titan, Io and such. With Jupiter, etc. in the background, either as part of the HDRI or even better as a separate movable sphere. And of course the other planets. For those of us that like to dabble in space art occasionally, yes more please!

My favorite HDRI is one called Aristea Wreck from HDRI Haven. I think it provides the most even, natural light at the default settings. And it makes most of my characters look as realistic as I've seen them. I also like one called Green Point Park, also from the same source and almost as good I think.

My favorite Light set is just the plain 3 point basic light I set up for all scenes 3delight and opengl. For Iray it is a homemade HDRI made of the background scene with the close stuff kept and the distant stuff out of focus and part of the HDRI. I should add this is really not a true HDRI but a Photoshop fake HDRI light created to speed up renders of sets that I render often. My problem with commercial HDRI lights is that the author of them makes the background so you have to use that. For beach and highway scenes these HDRI's are fine but I can't always find something to work with interiors spaces so I use Photoshop to fake the lights and speed up renders. Also I do composite everything in Photoshop or if you don't want to pay for it GIMP.

..I used to use to do a 3 point setup with an ambient in 3DL but with Iray it didn't work well. As I don't have photography equipment or the appropriate software, creating my own HDRIs is out of the question. ALso, I am interested in HDRIs that have scenery included. as it looks like using someone else's photo. That is why I mentioned Denki gaga's IBL Skies as my "go to" HDRIs. .

..I used to use to do a 3 point setup with an ambient in 3DL but with Iray it didn't work well. As I don't have photography equipment or the appropriate software, creating my own HDRIs is out of the question.

Thought it would be good to show as well as tell :) My gallery is mostly portraits when I was showcasing people for my Art Studio thread, so there are many examples of the above light sets. I use them all equally.

There is some free software out there that you can use to create .hdri's. The latest version of GIMP supposedly can do this to some degree as well, but it might not be as straightforward as photoshop. There's a guide on hdrihaven.com which talks about creating HDRIs as well. Looks like it's a bit of work to do, and I've never tried to create a 360 degree panoramic image in Daz Studio, so others should comment on that. That should allow you to 'skip' the whole multiple camera angles then stitch together afterwords thing.

As a total cheapskate, I have really only used the HDRI's that come with DS in the starter pack. Of the 5, the Desert Sunset one is the one I prefer. 'Tis a bit limiting in some ways, but the gentle light it casts is quite flattering on tanned/darker skinned models.

Most of my 'external' renders use sun/sky lighting within DS. My preferred locations being high latitude (70-80 degree north/south), date 21 June and time 18:00 to 23:00 depending on the exact lighting I want. This usually gives a low, yellow, gentle light that flatters the model and enables appropriate curves to be emphasised by skin glossiness highlights.

For studio portraits, it's a set by Fabiana on Rendo. For pretty much anything else, it's HDRI Haven. I would, however, also recommend the sets by Cake and Bob on the marketplace. I'm also a fan of PTF's Neon Splash Lighting Suite. I've purchased many a light set and those are the ones I keep coming back to. I've also learned that (for me) mesh lights are the devil (not spot lights turned mesh lights which are awesome...I'm talking about light sets that use emissive planes...just why omg why).

I love Sickleyield's Good to Go light set & HDRI, sold in her store on Rendo. Why? Because it is very easy to use and comes with one of her great tutorials. Just right for someone just starting to get serious about lighting

...the reason I prefer the IBL over other HDRI sets is they are just sky HDRIs with no ground scenery which also have different sun angles from sunrise to noon (sort of like the old LDP2). As I tend to build the foreground settings of my scenes using geometry and/or an occasional photo backdrop (which I create a mask out of to just have the elements in I need) I find those with ground level scenery to be useless.

Set with individual setup of lights: Colm Jackson's Render Studio 3. Lots of options, but not every light type us self-explanatory. Lots of options for experimenting but not for one-click-load-render solutions.

I second the Dimension Theory HDRIs as being very good. And not everyone wants direct sunlight in their outdoor scenes. DT has a MauiB HDRI that has beautiful ambient light which I use for my starter scene... 110MB.

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