HEMISPHERICAL HDR-IMAGES

 

These images are hemispherical panoramas, taken as addition to my Virtualvienna Project. You can find there some of the panoramas as full panorama in a bigger size than here.

All images have a trafficfriendly size(512x256px ~300-500kb).
This size is nearly equal to 512x512 lightprobes. ..please don't ask me for bigger hemispheres to upload!

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Thx goes to Stephane

How can i use them?

That's not easy to answer, because you can use Hdr images with many different 3d programs. With Vray you have the chance to use a normal LDR image as 3dsmax enviroment backroung image and inside the vray renderer you can overeride the enviroment with our hdri map for lighting. ..this will work with some other 3rd party renderer for max too.

You will need maybe splutterfishies hdr-loader for max.

Why do the hdrs have that low resolution?

The small imagesize of the hdrs from this site is not only bandwidth friendly, it's also the result from my own research and experience. You will not need 30k x 15k hdrs to lighten your scene. You will need such resolutions only for the BG image, and this can then be a JPG. A high sized hdr image renders longer and uses much more memory, so take care if you get hi res hdrs.

The most important part on hdrs is the range and not the size. The hdr images on this page have not super high dynamic range like those generated by spherions cameras, but with a little trick you can "paint" the missing range... just have a look at my tutorials.

What is that black area for?

I got mails, where ppl asked my why i have cropped the hdr below the horizont. I tried to develope a fast workflow to produce hdrs, because producing an fully blown hdri is a lot of work. I first thought capturing hdrs from spherical mirrors is the fastest way... yes it is, but you need two tripods at least and this is for me to much troubles on the street. ..and i'm a bit lazy for running around like a pack-animal.

My solution is really very easy. I use my fisheye to capture the whole sky. A little photoshop action script remap the images and a little batchfile generates the hdr-image ... read the tutorial.

You can also produce that images completly with hdrshop, but i never was satisfied with the output of hdrshop.. i still use mkhdr. ...the problem is that even resizing the hdrs seems to change the hdr image.. we are working on a compairson.

I hope you like the library and if you want to thank me than please donate with Paypal or send me a postcard.. which is the way i would prefer :)

have fun,

chris