High Definition Radiance Maps Review (HDRI TEXTURES)

[Anonymous]

Recently I have had the pleasure of reviewing a very professional and complete collection of HDRI Maps.

For those who are new to this rendering concept. HDRI is a method of lighting your scene which allows for a very realistic image. The realism comes at the expense of computer render times, but the savings is made up because you don't need to arrange lighting and reflected background elements.

Mark Wisniowski at http://www.HDRIMAPS.com has produced a CD collection of 55 hdri images. They are supplied in Spherical, Polar, Skydome and diffused Skylight formats. The reason for the different formats is determined by your rendering application, Max, LightWorks, C4D, etc. For example Cinema uses Spherical while 3dsMax needs Polar.

If you look around for a collection like this I think you would be hard pressed to fine such a great collection at this price. LightWorks endorses their work also by including it on the highly recommended list.

I place HDRI maps dot com at the top of the list and I look forward to their future CD releases.

To better explain what HDRI can do for a scene, I have created a small sample QuickTime movie. Using a Macintosh G5 dual processor and Cinema4D, the following images rendered at 20 minutes each. Same scene, the only thing different was the HDRI map. The scene is from a file supplied on the internet by Carles Piles, a master of Cinema4D.
Visit: http://www.3dluvr.com/carles/home_eng.htm

Humm the Beatle's tune, "Here comes the Sun", while you view the movie. Better yet, turn on your sound.

1 MB

http://www.burginger.com/ARCHICAD_TALK/HDRI_MAPS/HDRIMAPS_COM.mov

[Anonymous]

To use HDRI in Cinema 4D the Advanced Render Module is required, right? Thanks for the info! Very exciting to say the least..

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the post - I visited hdrimaps.com, but am not exactly sure how one would go about using the maps with lightworks & archicad. Is the light used as an object?

[Anonymous]

Don,

I don't think the Lightworks in AC supports HDRI... waaay too advanced.