Making of a Night Scene with HDRI (or A Sky Bitmap)

UPDATE:
For those who are having a hardtime with HDRI. You may substitute it with a sky bitmap.

Hi guys. I made a night scene tutorial based on my work-flow from my latest project. During my test renders, I found out that HDRI is a very powerful tool. I would like to share to you the product of my simple experiment. First we need to download an HDRI image of a sunset.

Here I used the Barcelona Rooftops

from >>> http://www.hdrlabs.com/sibl/archive.html

that was shared to us Nomeradona under free stuff section. I suggest you download it first before we start.

Next is we set up our scene. No lights yet, and just use your basic vray settings. I also found out that most of our settings for exterior will work.

Hit render and you will see something like this... A basic scene render.



Now we just add the VrayHDRI to the Environment Override on your vray settings.



Another VrayHDRI to your Background slot (type 8)



We will get something like this. Notice that the color of the scene has changed, this is due to the effect of the HDRI image to the scene. We can now feel the mood or the ambience.



Then we add lights, both fill lights and spotlights using vraylight (sphere) and IES light with web information of (ies-nice or 02).



And we have this now... almost done.



And finally, Add trees, cars, etc to complete the scene. Adjust in photoshop the colors or any mood you want to achieve.



I hope you like it! Enjoy creating your very own night scenes!

Thanks sa pag-appreciate mga bro. I'm glad you like it.

v_wrangler wrote:Actually bokks, whatever image map (HDRI, plain 8 bit or 24 images, colors or 3dsmax maps) you put in the Environment slot, it will be automatically used as the GI source of illumination and reflections. That means no need to put the same in the Overrides. You only use the overrides if you want to use a different image or simply want to change the orientation or exposure of either maps separately from that of the GI image-based lighting source.

Also for Image based Lighting (use of HDRIs for GI), you don't really need them big and detailed as they will be blurred and interpolated anyways. You can always use a small (256 pix) and blurred version of the same HDRI map used as a reflection override (if there's any). By doing so, you save some memory for the other operations. Of course, if you need this to reflect - the bigger version could reside in the Reflection Overrides.

Since the topic is lighting with HDRI, it is not really beholden to GI. You can also map a vray dome light and use it to light the scene with acceptable results. Sometimes, you can get away with a non-secondary bounce look which some might think as prerequisite to photorealism work. Nay.

Thanks V. I actually encountered that, but I can't get my desired result. 256(blurred) hdri on environment is ok, but that would be another slot to fill in my materials editor while I already have the hi res version that I used for my reflection that I could already use for my environment. that would save me very small time but is still a savings in theory. Also, I like to use the HDRI simply because I am able to rotate it to my desired position. I admit it's a memory eater but I'm loving the results. It's quite fast too. 10mins ++ at 720px, altho I havent tried it with a larger render. Thanks V for the insight. I'm still finding solutions and this discussion is really good.

What I would also like to add is that you can control the exposure with hdri the easy way. It just so happened that I am not able to explain that feature kasi maganda na yung exposure ng nakuha kong HDRI from the net. plus minus on the render multiplier will give different results quickly. so it's an advantages I guess.

dito bro. >>> http://www.hdrlabs.com/sibl/archive.html

Thanks bro! Glad you like it.