iRay and "skydomes"

holden_attradies

Hey all, I just got a new computer and can, for the first time, really start using iray to pull renders. Because they used to take HOURS to pull I never learned too much about iRay. I know that with it you don't use sky domes and that the sky is taken care of in the Enviroment windo and within the Enviroment Map little slider. Iray defaults loads a fairly nice sky with cloads and mountains, but where do I go about getting different skys? Are there products in the Daz store?

To be clear I'm looking just for skys, things to have in the background of outdoor renders. Especially a nice urban one that could have a city scape in the background.

Quixotry

Congratulations on the new computer. :)

This isn't a complete sampling of the products that have what you're looking for in them, but these are the ones I own and use.

The iRadience products are all very good. Skies of iRadience has lots of lovely skies and the HDRI Variety packs have good backgrounds. https://www.daz3d.com/catalogsearch/result/?q=iradience

Ultra Genesis Studio 2 has some backgrounds in as well. https://www.daz3d.com/ultra-genesis-studio-vol-2-ring-flash

I've been really enjoying Epic Skydomes. https://www.daz3d.com/epic-skydomes-cloud-haven-hdri

TerraDome 3 and its add-on packs also have a lot of skies to play with. https://www.daz3d.com/terradome-3-iray

prixat

Have you seen the HDRI thread in freebies?

http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/57531/list-of-sites-with-free-hdri

holden_attradies

Thanks for the links, I'll start checking them out. One quick question: what is HDRI?

prixat

For our purposes,an HDR file contains both the background image and it's light intensities, whle a JPG, for example; would only contain the image.

Is that what you're asking?

 

holden_attradies

prixat said:

For our purposes,an HDR file contains both the background image and it's light intensities, whle a JPG, for example; would only contain the image.

Is that what you're asking?

 

 

Yes, thank you very much!

SpottedKitty

One other thing to watch out for; proper HDRI images in the proper format and suitable for actual background use are all slightly mindbogglingly huge, in file size and pixel dimensions. Smaller files such as the default Iray environment map are really only suitable for environment lighting — background environments need a lot more detail.