Remember a jpeg will never give the same quality of light as a hdr. This way you get an ultra sharp background with beautiful light from the hdr. One way to reduce your render times is use a hdr of around 4000x2000 pixels to ILLUMINATE the scene and then a high res jpeg of double the resolution as the BACKGROUND. If you really want to anchor your render into the HDRI, it should really be both the background and the light source as they will match in tone. You can use the spherical just for background mapping if you like, in which case you add your own sky/lighting method.
I would much rather use an IBL that I need to increase in brightness rather than one which is overexposed to begin with. If the scene is dim then just increase the intensity of the IBL in your rendering engine. The IBL should be your only light source, if you want it to light your scene of course. There should be no need to subsidise any lighting with the sun or physical sky. (shameless plug )Īn IBL by definition should be your method of lighting the scene.
See my hdri pack for example, there is a free JPEG sample you can play with too, free hdr sample to premium members. I don't know Vray, but I think the aspect ratio must be 2:1 for an equirectangular environment in most renderers(?)Īny Equirectangular Spherical Panorama MUST be 2:1 ratio. Masjanu wrote:or is HDRI file has to be a big big size pixel (I use 1024 x 768 px).
