AVLKray wrote:yes renders are good indeed, but I have been trying with HDRI many times and couldn't get it right (that must be me)
And as always too little time to do much experimenting
It is not about You
Generally HDRi in my opinion is useless technology (there are some situation when they are necessary). Using HDRi for exteriors is waste time for interiors the most horrible choice. Of course you can notice some really nice renders on the web based on HDRi but this maps are high quality, has good information of light inside (without "hot pixels" so quality again) and sometimes are special part of engine which helps render with HDRi and avoid problems with them.
Render with HDRi maps are:
- ugly with colors (you can desaturate them of course)
- produce a lot bad photos (hot photons)
- gradient of light in these maps are much more "brutal" then Physky
- simulation of colors and light far away from Physky perfection
- to receive Sun effect from HDRi (no cloudy map) you must tweak HDRi map (exposure, tone mapping) which affect a lot problems and errors in render because you must deal with very "brutal" photons solution (lets call this as forcing whole photon map solution which is very FRAGILE generally)
Many people use this because they think this is solution for light but ONLY proper solution is PHYSKY. ONLY Physky give perfect gradient of light according to physics, Photon Map from Physky is clean, well balanced and this affect later better (natural) render. Final Gathering is based on Photon Map and if this map (as source of information for GI samples) is bad then you will have also GI bad. So idea is to RECEIVE as much is possible CLEAN Photon Map in first seconds of render when Kray shoot photons. HDRi will never give you clean solution.
In Kray 3.0 we have new system of Physky (based on fresh science research and mathematician formulas) and this light in future will be solution for many problems.
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