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Spherical HDR Maps?

ScavengerScavenger Posts: 2,665
in Technical Help (nuts n bolts)

I was looking for some nice free HDR maps to try out, and I found a some that a guy put up that he had taken.

http://www.unparent.com/photos_probes.html

But rather than the big panaramic ones I've seen, this is in the form of a sphere.

Does that work? Is that normal?

 

(note: the picture is a screen shot of the map, not the map itself).

Screenshot 2015-07-21 10.57.06.png
1292 x 1284 - 2M

Comments

  • BejaymacBejaymac Posts: 1,889
    edited July 2015

    Does that work? 

    Simple answer, No.

    Post edited by Bejaymac on
  • mjc1016mjc1016 Posts: 15,001

    Some applications can use the panoramic ones, some use a 'cross' format and others use the spherical ones...and a few will allow all three, if you set a parameter telling the render which one you are using. 

    Studio is pretty much set up for one type...even if the renderer can use all of them, it's not that easy to switch.

  • ScavengerScavenger Posts: 2,665

    I did plug that one above in, and got some neat shadows and light..i haven't let the render go long enough to see reflections, though.

  • BejaymacBejaymac Posts: 1,889

    They give you poor lights in Iray and probably the same with UE2 in 3DL, the attached is Iray with the dome being displayed, as you can see you have large black areas, those don't generate any light so what you get from the rest of the HDR is screwed, then there's the heavy distortion around the edges of the sphere, they make using it for reflections or as a background pretty pointless.

    spherical.jpg
    432 x 623 - 73K
  • ScavengerScavenger Posts: 2,665

    Ah..I understand! Thanks!

  • mjc1016mjc1016 Posts: 15,001

    In 3DL, you can pass it to tdlmake with command line parameters to set it up to use correctly.  UE2/Studio doesn't allow you to add those parameters, so yeah, you are pretty much going to get the same, poor results.   Unless you run tdlmake on it manually...then point UE2 to that file.

    In Iray, there should be a similar function, but I don't know if Studio has a way to access it...I'm thinking it doesn't.

    In some programs it's just a simple box/dropdown list that you enter the type: latlong(equirectangular/pano), spherical, cross/cubic, when you attach the hdr and everything else is done behind the scenes.

  • prixatprixat Posts: 1,588

    Find the 'Free for non-commercial use'(version 1) of HDRshop.

    That has Spherical to LatLong conversion in just a couple of clicks.

    (It's no longer offered on the HDRshop website but you should still be able to find it somewhere on the web.)

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