HDRi Really Hi-Res

[Noise]

Hi

Where would I get really hi-res hdri's ?

About the 14,000 pixel mark and above ?

Thanks

N

[Dave Buchhofer]

http://www.hdri-locations.com/products.php has some high quality ones tailored more towards car shots, also some of the source imagery from http://www.bobgroothuis.com/blog/2009/06/order_page/ look good and fairly cheap

both of which are mainly in the 11k range though.. as thats going to be pretty standard for the 10.5 fisheye technique (most common way to build them up at the moment) with the current crop of SLR bodies.

[stef.thomas]

These have to be the pick of the bunch I think, not only in terms of size but they just look really good too.
http://www.hyperfocaldesign.com/vhdri-skies

There's another site I've been keeping an eye on too which has been posting free 10,000px wide HDRIs. They also do a load of free HD stock footage as well, definitely one to bookmark!
http://www.openfootage.net/

[Noise]

Thanks for your help - I am going to go for the hyperfocal Vhdris.

[Mat@MDI-Digital]

you can get that large by using a 21mp camera and a 15mm fisheye... Just so happens to be my setup, the final hdri is about 14,500k wide.


these are the only ones I know of that are that large
http://www.hyperfocaldesign.com/vhdri-skies

But I dont think anyone else actualy sells any that large, most people dont need that kinda size, and at 14k wide they work out at about 400mb each.

[Maxer]

I've got a question about HDRI quality, I've been using a collection from Dosh Design for a few years and they've been pretty good. The one thing I don't like is that the map appears fuzzy once rendered (resolution of map is 2048x1024) even at resolutions smaller than the map its self. I'm using Vray with a physical camera and a single vray light with a HDRI added to the texture channel. What I want is a crisp sky and clouds but nothing I do seems to affect the quality, so do I need higher rez HDRI's to acheave this?

[BrianKitts]

Yes because with spherical mapping you're only seeing at most 1/4 of an HDR in your background. So if your initial HDR is only 2048px wide, and your are rendering @ 3k pixels wide, you're stretching approx 512 pixels across the background of your 3k image.

I have a set of HDRs from hyperfocal that are 10k wide and even with those I rarely use the rendered background and always replace the background in post. I typically render out finals somewhere from 4k-6k wide which is far wider than the 2.5k of the HDR being stretched for the backgound.

I really only use the HDR for the lighting and reflections.

[stef.thomas]

The short answer is yes. Don't forget that the 2048 refers to the full 360 circumference of the image as viewed in the viewport. Taking an average FOV of 45 degrees means that the portion you are viewing as your background is probably around 256 pixels across. Even for some of the so-called 'super hi-res' ones it'll never be quite as good as a hi-res photo. Usually if it's just clouds though you can get away with it.

Edit: Beat me to it!

[Maxer]

I see, so the Hyperfocal maps are 7 times better than the Dosch maps which should translate into 7 times better resolution than what I'm getting now. I'm using these in animations at the moment are there any problems with file sizes?

[stef.thomas]

As a general rule you should be using your full-res map for background, a half-res map for reflections and if you're using the HDRI just as skylight i.e. in conjunction with a direct light source then you can use a small blurred version for your lighting. This will speed up your GI calcs no end. I typically use a 360x180 pixel version, with a heavy gaussian blur applied.

The only way you wouldn't want to do this is if you wanted your HDRI to be casting sharp shadows.