I always use physical camera.

It helps to have a photography background, but if you use a Vray sun and sky as a starting point you should set your camera to realistic f stops and shutter settings and it will look as it should. Interiors you need longer exposures just as you would in real life as it's darker.

I don't use HDRI's as much as I'd like to mainly because I don't have a great selection of HDRI's I need to invest in better maps.

I have to run but when I get back I can post a good baseline for getting decent exteriors.

i like to keep it simple so i don't use physical camera.

for exterior images, i use just one directional light and HDRI environment lighting. the key is in the indirect illumination with the primary engine set to irradiance map and the secondary engine set to QMC.

for interior images, i use a combination of one directional light for shadows with rectangular lights (multiplier can vary a lot). within indirect illumination, the primary engine is set to irradiance map and the secondary engine is set to light cache (more reflections).

i've tried numerous other methods, including physical camera f-stops, but i have found the settings above provide the easiest and most adaptable way to produce quality renderings

i sometimes use HDRI environment for exterior lighting which has a good quality for rendering.

however, i've been having problems trying to get a good quality image for my backround. the images seem to be a little too distorted or only part of the image shows in the backround.

has anyone had the same problem or know how to correct it?

Zune

I assume you are using a VrayHDRI for the shader type? You probably just need to select the appropriate map type, go back to where you purchased it to find out, if you can't just do a couple of quick test to see.

dot

I find the physical camera actually greatly simplifies things for me because it allows me to use realistic lighting levels which accomplishes three things.

First it makes setting up lights easy, you just turn on the vray sun set the multiplier to 1 and place your IES lights with their appropriate output and you're done setting up your lights, no more rendering it seeing it's too blown out, adjust my lights test again.

Second if you do need to make a global adjustment you can do it at the camera level which will make EVERYTHING brighter or darker rather than adjust lights one by one or use Max exposure control.

Third it's great for going from interior setup to exterior or a camera on one side of the building vs the other. You will always have to make adjustments for each camera, using the physical camera allows you to make those adjustments with out radically altering the lighting environment.

I don't know if you guys are in school or in-house at arch firms but in a production environment the advantages of the physical camera are quite significant.

psycho-mullet

thanks for the info. i have to invest in better HDRI maps as well.
unfortunately as most of us know, money is kind of tight right now.
for now, i will stick with the physical camera settings and make the most of it.

psycho - mullet, i think you made some good points.

for me, i've just found some settings that work pretty quickly and consistently, so i've stuck with them.

Zune

Not sure if I was clear when I said map type.

In your VrayHDRI Shader there is a dialog box "HDRI map" where you browse to select you HDRI map.

Under that slot is a box titled "Map Type" with radial buttons for Angular Map, Cubic Environment, Spherical environment, etc." You need to make sure the map type selected corresponds with the map type of your HDRI.

A cubic environment is like an unfolded cube with six sides a spherical environment is a sphere smashed onto a cube, a spherical ball is a photograph taken of a shiny polished sphere.

It needs to know which type of map you are using or it will map it improperly, I'm thinking that may have been your problem.

Two other big problem with HDRI's is getting the brightness correct and the Gamma and ensuring Max's Gamma and LUT settings correspond.

psycho-mullet

i was trying out some free HDRI maps with the shiny polished sphere. i was mostly using it in the environment settings for the GI and backround. my mapping did coincide with the spherical settings.

i just didn't know if there were other settings i may have missed for my render to have a clear backround as well, rather than it looking blurred in the backround. for example, i wanted to use one with mountains in the backround, i tampered with the blurr setting and multiplier but it just didn't look right.

i was looking at some HDRI tutorials for VRay skechtup but they really don't go into details as far as the settings. anyhow, thanks for your help.

Psyscho, these are some helpful tips.

Here are some of the issues that I run into.

When I use the physical camera in correlation with an HDRI sky, I always have to increase the multiplier by hundreds, or even thousands sometimes. The lighting works well, but is that normal (greatly increasing the multiplier)?

Another interesting point that you brought up was the map type; sphere, cube, mirror ball, etc. What would a 360 panorama shot of an HDRI Sky be at? For instance, the ones at this site.

http://www.openfootage.net/?cat=15&paged=3

(btw, those you see on the link, are for free, and they actually work pretty well!)


Thank You!