READ ME HDRI Handbook Companion DVD No DVD Menu? Honestly, who is not annoyed by fancy autostart menus? This is a data DVD, so let’s cut right down to the chase. Software HDR Images Tutorial Files Stuff you can really use HOW TO NAVIGATE THIS DVD You know already how to get around here. There is no need for a fancy menu, because you have already a far superior browsing system installed. One that you already know how to use: Just navigate this DVD with Windows Explorer or Mac Finder, just like you would find your way through any other folder structure. If you’re on a Mac, I recommend using Icon Mode, because most folders are tagged with custom icons, and everything is laid out in a way that it (hopefully) makes sense. A huge advantage of going this route is that you can access all the content from within any software’s file requester. This DVD is actually just half the story. Anything that runs the risk of getting outdated anytime soon can be found on the companion website: www.HDRLabs.com Browse this DVD in Thumbnail Mode You’ll find stuff much easier. a full copy of Photosphere PPC here. Copy it to your Applications folder, and you’re all set up to browse, view, and make HDRIs. You will also find trial versions sional edition for Mac and PC. These evaluation copies are fully functional, but they apply a watermark to the final image. Please keep in mind that HDRI is a very rapidly evolving topic, where innovations and revolutions are made on a monthly schedule. Most certainly there are significant updates for each program already online. If you have a working internet connection, I highly recommend that you grab the latest versions online. To make it easier for you, I have set up a link list that takes you directly to the download pages. This list will always be upto-date, and even include software that hasn’t been discussed in the book. Happy scraping! of FDR Tools, Photomatix and www.hdrlabs.com/tools Everything here to get you started right away. The “Tools” folder includes some essential HDRI software as a courtesy to my offline readers. PC users get a super deluxe version of Picturenaut, with all of Banty’s Filter plugins already in place. No installation necessary, just copy the Picturenaut folder to your Programs folder. Mac users will be happy to find PTGui, each of them as profes- FULL SOFTWARE Picturenaut Photosphere PPC TRIAL VERSIONS FDR Tools Advanced Photomatix Pro PTGui Pro HDR IMAGES High-res HDRIs for you to play with, including original exposure brackets! Haven’t shot your own yet? No problem. You can dive right into HDR generation and tonemapping with these images. They are provided under the Creative Commons License. Use it, tweak it, make it your own. Just remember to tell everyone where you got ‘em from! All these images are 10 Megapixel big, shot with a Nikon D200 in auto-bracketing mode. Some are shot with a tripod, some with a monopod, and depending on the scene there are between 5 and 9 exposures per bracketing sequence. The ready-made HDR images are available in Radiance and OpenEXR format, ready for tonemapping. They have been generated in various tools, even though the file tag might always register Photoshop as creator. SPECIAL INTEREST Feeling experimental today? Advanced HDR freaks are invited to sharpen their Ninja skills on some particular problems, that require special attention. Can you and your software stand the test? GHOST ALLEY That’s because they have all been cleaned up, converted, and sometimes cropped in Photoshop CS3. Just as outlined in chapter 3, it is my strong belief that a clean HDRI should be the base for all further processing steps. A good exercise would be to create your own HDR image from the original exposures, and then take it through the cleanup steps yourself. I’m sure you’ll be able to beat mine pretty quickly. BIG MOONMANIA TOURIST RAW CALIBRATION BIG MOON RAW CALIBRATION TONEMAPPING Compare tonemappers conveniently on screen! You might have noticed that the beginning of chapter 4 is put together in a very clever way: When you fold the pages halfway in, you can put any combination of tonemapping examples side by side. However, the images in print are rather small, and the difference in the details is sometimes hard to make out. But fear not! You’ll find all example images as full-sized TIFFs in the “Tonemapping” folder. So you can use your favorite image viewer to see them fullscreen, split-screen, multi-screen, or whatever fancy screen technology you can master. Heck, you could even print them all out and make them into a giant wallpaper! Of course, the original HDRIs are right here as well. Tonemap them yourself with your favorite program, and add your own result to the ballot! As a special treat you’ll also get a Flash Gallery. That is simply the slickest way to tap back and forth between these images, because I have laid out the thumbnails in useful grids views for you. It’s best navigated with the cursor keys, because you can quickly hop through lines and columns while keeping an eye on the image itself. Bonus Flash Gallery HDRI EDITING Colorgrading with Levels Discover the floating point domain, a wonderful place to be! When the white point is not a clipping barrier anymore, and all the color values are retained with close-to-infinite precision, the game has changed entirely. Take your first steps by doing the workshops in chapter 5 with the files from the “Editing” folder. It’s all right here: • starting point • in-between steps • final images When it makes sense, these files are provided as unflattened 32-bit .psd files, ready to be used with Photoshop CS3 Extended. Painting with Light Glow in After Effects superslick Day-For-Night Tutorial Starting point and final images are in OpenEXR format, so you can use them with your favorite image editor. PANORAMA STITCHING Segmental Capture: Avebury Church by Bernhard Vogl Become a panorama pro by following the stitching tutorials in chapter 5! Of course, it’s more fun to go out and shoot your own HDR panoramas. For the rest of us that don’t have the equipment necessary yet, all the files used in the tutorials can be found in the “Panoramas” folder: • original source images, • pre-merged HDR images, • PTGui and Hugin project files, • several intermediate states of postprocessing. • the final images in full resolution. Even for the seasoned pro, it can be a neat exercise to explore one of the other methods: Mirrorball, Segmental Capture or Skydome - it’s all right here! BONUS MATERIAL Want to stitch some on your own? If you got the general workflow down, and feel like you can stitch without an explicit tutorial, then why don’t you test your skills on these bonus panoramas? MANS CHINESE MONO LAKE Mirrorball Apartment Skydome Downtown EDEN FX OFFICE DTOWN HOTEL CGI A gold mine for 3D artists The infamous Apartment Scene is a good testing ground for curious people. Objects and scene files in the “CGI” folder are included in a variety of formats: 3dsMAX, Softimage XSI, Maya, Lightwave, Cinema4D, VRML, OBJ, DXF. Most of these scenes are set up by participants of the original HDRI Challenge project in 2003. Bear this creation date in mind, there might be some adjustments necessary for current software versions. Consider this material as a recommended starting point for your own experiments. Yummy HDR Cookies These are cool assets that you can use to supercharge regular spotlights with real world light information. Even when rendering without radiosity, your lighting will get an enormous quality boost. How exactly that is applied in your 3D app, you will have to figure out on your own. Time to get inventive! Lightbitch As a special treat for LightWave users I have included a full version of my latest plugin. LightBitch is the most intuitive way of converting HDR panoramas into a professional lightrig. It is the only solution where you can edit the lights yourself and tweak it to your gusto. Installation: Copy the LightBitch folder to your plugins folder, and add all 4 included scripts with “Add Plugins” to your Lightwave. LightBitch will show up in the “Utilities-Additional” dropdown list, but I recommend dedicating a menu button to it with “Edit Menu”. Keep the book on your desk, you will need to find the password for registration! Exclusive Lightwave Plugin Image based lighting has just become a whole lot easier! The “Smart IBL” folder holds the official premiere release of our revolutionary lighting toolkit. sIBL-Edit by Chris Huf sIBL-Edit has all you need to create, edit, and manage your sIBL presets. It’s a standalone application for Windows and Linux. Installation: Just drag-n-drop the sIBL-Edit folder anywhere on your harddrive. The path to your sIBL Collection needs to be configured upon the initial start. Your initial sIBL Collection is already supercharged with plenty of high-res environments, all royalty-free for you to use however you like. Compared to commercial HDRI collections, this folder has more value in it than the cover price of the book! You also get setup assistant scripts, that turn on the lights in your 3D package! Currently included are: SMART IBL sIBL for LightWave by Christian Bloch sIBL for 3dMAX by Christian Bauer sIBL for Maya by Volker Heisterberg For updates and feedback see www.smartIBL.com Huge High-Res sIBL Collection Create great lighting setups with the flip of a button! • Optimized for render time • Automatic key light • Reflections with “that kick” • Ideal for Modeling-WIPs • Unified across platforms • Centralized preset location in a network environment IS THAT IT? Yeah, and it’s a lot! License All the content on this DVD is yours to play with and experiment with. All software remains copyright of the respective authors. As the author of the image material, however, I grant you permission to use, alter, remix, and share ?... ! these images in noncommercial projects, provided you identify The HDRI Handbook as the original source and refer to Christian Bloch as the original author. Under no circumstances shall you claim full authorship, and for commercial use you need to contact me with a permission request. That’s just fair play. Get involved in the forum! Feedback For any questions regarding the book, workshops, or tutorials you should visit the HDRI Community Forum online. This is also a great place to share your own results, new techniques you discovered, or simply get it touch with other HDR fanatics. Y!rs truly, Ch"#ian Bloch This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 171 Second Street, Suite 300, San Francisco, California, 94105, USA.