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How to create our own HDRI from a scene in Daz?

tring01tring01 Posts: 305
in Technical Help (nuts n bolts)

I've recently been introduced to the spherical camera in the 4.9 Beta.  I've done enough testing to know that I can take a spherical image of a scene in Daz and use it as the dome image for an IRay render.

Number of questions I hope you folks can help me with:

1.  What's the "best" pixel size and ratio to render the image in?

2.  Is there any way/workflow to convert the image to a .exr file?

Thanks in advance!

Comments

  • Richard HaseltineRichard Haseltine Posts: 100,781

    2. Use a Canvas - in the Advanced tab of render Settings, in the Canvasses sub-tab, create a new Beauty Pass and a new node group inluding everything in the scene. When you save your render a new folder will be created with the render name plus canvasses and in that you will find the .exr version.

  • tring01tring01 Posts: 305

    I've tried this a couple times.  The first canvas came out as a purely white 46MB image.  The second image was 46KB and came out as a combination of white and black shapes that look something like a few items in the scene.  Not sure at all how to make this work.

  • Richard HaseltineRichard Haseltine Posts: 100,781

    The .exr will not look right in Photoshop without tonal adjustment. You do, for this, want to use a linear render as far as I know - in Render Settings turn Tone Mapping Enable off.

  • tring01tring01 Posts: 305

    I realize you're trying to help, but I've done some reading and what you're suggesting doesn't seem to be in any way related to or useful to what I'm looking for.  I see that I can create a .exr image using this process - but that's not of any use in creating my own HDRI of a Daz scene - which is what I'm trying to do.

    Does a .exr image have anything to do with what I'm trying to achieve?

  • ToborTobor Posts: 2,300

    The EXR files that come out of the Canvas render are 32-bit TIFs. That's what you want.

    You don't need to select any scene nodes for a basic Beauty Pass. Just choose that option as the canvas you want, and render. Choose None for Nodes.

    Now bring the rendered EXR into Photoshop and tone map it for HDR: Image->Adjustments->HDR Toning. Play. The Local Adaptation method usually works pretty good. You can tweak from there.

  • tring01tring01 Posts: 305
    Tobor said:

    The EXR files that come out of the Canvas render are 32-bit TIFs. That's what you want.

    You don't need to select any scene nodes for a basic Beauty Pass. Just choose that option as the canvas you want, and render. Choose None for Nodes.

    Now bring the rendered EXR into Photoshop and tone map it for HDR: Image->Adjustments->HDR Toning. Play. The Local Adaptation method usually works pretty good. You can tweak from there.

    Excellent, thanks.  Couple more questions if you would be so kind:

    1.  What resolution and aspect ratio would you suggest for the render?

    2.  Since I don't own photoshop, is there some other program I could use?  Perhaps Gimp, or something like that?

  • grinch2901grinch2901 Posts: 1,246

    Related question: is there any rule of thumb where to put the camera? Obviously wherever you put it will be the center of the HDRI but I mean height.  Does it matter really?

  • mjc1016mjc1016 Posts: 15,001
    grinch2901 said:

    Related question: is there any rule of thumb where to put the camera? Obviously wherever you put it will be the center of the HDRI but I mean height.  Does it matter really?

    Eyeball height...basically as if you were standing there looking out at the scene.  About 5 ft 6 in would be a good height.

  • grinch2901grinch2901 Posts: 1,246

    Okay, so in Daz scale y=167.6, I'll try that.  Thanks!  

  • mjc1016mjc1016 Posts: 15,001
    edited December 2016

    I know I had a link to a tutorial on setting up a camera to shoot them...and the author was saying that's what he used (one of the 'name' HDRi providers...not here, but in general usage...and it wasn't Greg Zaal...).

    The link to Greg's tutorial is in my list (Adaptivesamples tutorial).  Most of it, dealing with camera specifics isnt' really needed with a rendered one, but there's a lot in it, that would apply.

    Post edited by mjc1016 on
  • ToborTobor Posts: 2,300
    tring01 said:

    2.  Since I don't own photoshop, is there some other program I could use?  Perhaps Gimp, or something like that?

    There have been some threads here about using a beta (?) version of GIMP for editing 32-bit EXRs/HDRs, but as I don't use that program, I didn't pay much attention. I'm sure there's something out there. As this topic has come up from time to time, you might poke around to see if any of those threads surface. (You need to do a Google search for forum threads; searching from within the forum will only lead to insanity.)

  • mjc1016mjc1016 Posts: 15,001

    Yes, the latest betas of GIMP should have 32-bit EXR support...and with GIMP most of the time, the betas are stable, it's just the feature set is not agreed to or new features are still being added.

  • tring01tring01 Posts: 305

    Oh, one thing I didn't mention on this thread.  I believe you need to use Daz4.9 beta for this as you need to do the render through a camera with a spherical lens.  The spherical lens setting is only available in the beta currently.

  • ToborTobor Posts: 2,300

    Apparently the 2.9.x fork of GIMP supports EXR, but it's still considered beta. Based on comments here, the 2.8.x versions either has limited support for EXR, or has otherwise been found not to be useful.

    I wanted to clarify my post above about canvases being 32-bit TIFs; I meant TIF generically. The EXR format is like TIF in many ways, including offering lossless compression, but you do need a graphics program that knows how to open this file format in order to use it.

  • mjc1016mjc1016 Posts: 15,001

    The odd-numbered versions of GIMP are always 'beta'...or more precisely 'development'. 

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