A way to make HDRI-domes work with larger pictures
Hera
Posts: 1,957
If you want to render a work which is 2000 * 1500 pixels, most of the HDRI-pictures out there are too small, even the DAZ one like Skies of Economy. The result comes out blurry and with no contrasts.
Some test runs of mine gives that you have to make your picture not larger than 500 * 500 pixels to make out of the box Skies of Economy looking decent. And out of the box Erupiter does not work for pictures larther than 250 * 250.
Or am I missing something, is there a way around that, some kind of instancing or framing that makes HDRI skies look decent even for larger renders than the ones mentioned above.
Comments
I routinely do renders at higher resoltuions with HDRI's without issue.
Perhaps you're doing something strange?
@Hera "If you want to render a work which is 2000 * 1500 pixels, most of the HDRI-pictures out there are too small, even the DAZ one like Skies of Economy"
The Skies of Economy HDRIs are all 8K maps. I have the same experience as @kenshaw011267. Something must be off in your set up. I routinely use them w 6000x4000 renders. Do note that Skies of Economy are just that, skies.
Skies of Economy are 8k, which is fine, but there's only so much crispness you can expect out of them. They're not meant to be the focus of the render, but rather lighting and a background.
Anyway, this is a 2k render using one of Cake and Bob's 8k and 16k no DOF HDRIs with DOF turned off. Seems okay?
Well, I'm not sure if I'm using the products in a wrong way then, but I'm not getting any results like that.
This what I get with an out of the box render of 1000*1000. I create a primitive just for something to focus on, I load a sky and then I hit render. The result is blurred and washed out.
This is a quick render in 4K using Skies of Economy 16 (I also attached my scene file)
JPG High Compression (Low Quality)
JPG Low Compression (High Quality)
Probably not an ideal example because it looks like it has a lot of JPG compression.
You are right, I uploaded a HQ version
Render settings - very much out of the box too:
Yeah, that's prety much default. What about your camera settings?
Very much default too
So is there anything I can do then save for returning this product and not buying these kinds of items in the future? I like the idea and hava a few maps which are 20.000 * 10.000 and those work well for larger pictures, but not those that aren't even half the size.
Maybe that is the problem... The various limits kick in and stop the process before the render is up to the quality you want, the default values are quite low IMHO.
I'm sorry, but I still don't know what to do. If there's any settings I can change or suchlike. Am I missing something obvious?
@Hera
If you're expected crisp detailed clouds with the Skies of Economy, you have the wrong product. HAveing bought all of the Skies of Ecomony, I suspect there are DOF effects baked into the HDRI. I don't believe there are any crisp details to start.
What I do when I want a crisp HDRI is place the HDRI on the inside of a sphere and then it is not so far away and stretched out, then I can resize it and I change the emission color from black to white. Turn off the skydome and render scene only. You have to fidget with the right orientation but it works great. In this way you also have much more control over the HDRI shader properties. Once you get the sphere in place save it for later recall. :)
Well, I'm not requiring overly crisp, a cell phone shot quality of a sky would've been good enough for me, but look at the picture I posted above! It'sgrainy and bleached, as if scanned from a newspaper. So I wondered if there was any way to possibly better that, using render settings or smth like that.
I might try to experiment with a sphere, as RexRed suggests, that was after all the way I often did it with 3DL, then it should also possible to instance those pictures.