HDRI / environmental lighting in workspace

[Hatchetman]

Is there? And how do you do it?

[Prodigy]

You can use Hdri on Workspace only if you own Vray. Vray has that feature for Workspace.. I need to start to test YafaRay that i believe also use hdri images..

If you mean Realtime? No there's no way to get environment lights using an Hdri image, but you can use a hdri image as a texture on a sphere for example to simulate the environment etc..

Hope that helps.

[Hatchetman]

Oh well, I can stick to model side for a few things.. thanks!

[First Light]

Hi Hatchetman,

YafaRay4tS (the Workspace Side trueSpace XML exporter for the open-source YafaRay renderer) does appear to provide partial support for HDRI. Jack Edwards can speak more intelligently about this (he's one of the principal developers of the YafaRay4tS add-on). According to the Development Progress page of the YafaRay for trueSpace Project website, HDRI background images are supported. However, YafaRay4tS is a script rather than a plugin and it doesn't provide HDR direct export capability from trueSpace at this time. The developers are considering transforming YafaRay4tS into a plugin in the future to fully integrate it into trueSpace and provide both preview and HDR export capability. But this is a large undertaking (the code must be rewritten in C++) and it won't happen unless lots of us support it. If you'd like to support their efforts, please visit the YafaRay for trueSpace Project website and donate US$5 or $10. I have. Visit their Development Plans page for more info on the future plans of YafaRay4tS. This is one project that would be great to see continue!!!

Best regards, First Light

[Hatchetman]

Hey! You beat me to it.. I was gonna jump in here and mention Yafaray. I'm getting used to it, never being a fan of the material editor in the LE. And I'm gonna donate as soon as our 6 week old baby bills are paid up.

Pay no attention to the headless barbie doll..

[Emmanuel]

I am currently exploring Keyshot, a nice real-time render engine with some animation features.

It offers environmental lightening as many similar tools, and I am wondering wonder why Caligari developpers never implemented that feature to Workspace.

After all, HDRI lightening is basically just a multiple lights setup based on bitmap texture painted on a sphere. Is there some limitation in the Workspace engine that prevents using too many lights ? Or a distance issue ?
Any explanation someone ?

[bitkar]

maybe i dont understand what you mean, but this comes down to render engine and now workspace. Even directX is render engine.

[Finis]

I use Blender now but if I remember correctly trueSpace has an image based light. Pseudo environment lighting: enclose a scene in a sphere with IBL using an appropriate image. Maybe an alternative if HDR environment lighting is not available.

[Emmanuel]

I mean, in trueSpace 6 days, when there was no GI nor HDRI tool in trueSpace we used to fake a global illumination using a sky dome filled with spot lights casting map shadows at a low intensity. That did the trick and was rendering fast. Basically, an array of lights forming a dome shape tends to create a soft shadow at the corner of objects and makes a more realistic picture.
We could adjust all the spot lights glued together at once using a plugin (Light Man tsx 1.0) ; it was easy and efficient. See Modeler scene attached.

Then trueSpace 7 came with built in HDRI for Lightworks, then VRay and its own great GI, and I stopped using those fake global illumination tricks.

I tried to reproduce that, with a skydome of lights in Workspace's real-time renderer. My hope was to reproduce the same soft shadows in real-time. But Workspace lights tends to create sharp or less accurate shadows ; they are difficult to adjust and I can't achieve what I am thinking of...

Modern GPU renderers like Keyshot are using real-time lightening and shadows though. They somehow cast shadows from lights emitted on a skydome.

Did anyone tried such experience ?

[trueBlue]

One thing that is real handy in Workspace when you want to change, as an example, several selected Spotights at one time, is the jScript Macro Recorder

.

Also, Clinton discovered that your meshes need a minimum amount of elements
Like a ground flat Plane 100 x 100
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