Category: development

If you are looking for an HDR generator tool you are in the right place, and at the right time too.
During the next week, we are going to launch Real HDR 1.7 with updated features and new tools and in this article, I’d like to cover two of them: Real PBR Link and the Satellite System.

REAL PBR link

As you probably already knew, I am working on a new real-time raytracing physically based rendering tool named Real PBR. I cover most of it on its own website and blog.
What links Real HDR to Real PBR is an option available in the Options Window that will enable a connection between the HDRI you are generating and the realtime rendering in the other tool. This way Real HDR won’t need to include complicated extra features for rendering and this won’t change its price, after all, you are looking for an HDR generator and Real HDR will keep and improve this as its main goal.

Satellite System

It is time to say goodbye to the “Click&Go” feature that I introduced in v 1.4 of Real HDR and to say Hello! to the new system I developed to place lights in a 3D space: the Satellite System.
This decision has two reasons: the first reason is that I recently discovered that there is a patent that constrains the way a light is placed by using a reflection ray from a normal. In my naive development approach, I was researching a way to offer you a good way to place a light and indeed, the Click&Go seemed to be a nice way: you click on a surface and the Click&Go detects its normal to define the position where a light should be to lit that precise spot (Click&Go was a little different in reality, but the final experience was somehow the same). Too simple to be real and I am sure many of us already developed such common knowledge for experienced users.
Somehow it is like to warm water before having a shower, too basic to be patented but anyway, I am here to research, develop and offer better solutions for my customers and not to fight on patents.

Say Goodbye to the Click&Go. Now deprecated

By the way, if you also think about this, the Click&Go – as well as the similar mentioned patent – both suffer from a problem: the user must see the polygon that will reflect the ray and this requires control manipulation of both object and the point of view. And this is the second reason that pushed me to research something better. The story is very long and romantic and starts from my Black Hole test – I won’t write it here but we can talk about it on the Discord channel if you like.
To make it short I can describe myself as a technical 3D Artist and my goal is to provide an automated way that may speed-up or enrich the final output of a 3D Artist. So I thought about my approach when lighting a scene: I place the camera first, then the object, then the lights and so on. Point of view first THEN illumination… and this is the thing: sometimes I don’t have access to the polygon I need, simply because it is occluded. And here is where the Satellite System comes in, providing an orbital preview of the light direction all around the 3D mesh combined with a static rendering viewport.
Simply put: you look through the viewfinder and you place the lights around your object as you were a photographer. Cool right? In my old manual about 3dsMax for the Italian publisher Hoepli (back in 2008…wow!) I underlined a similar approach to customize the viewport of the software since the times of Kinetix and Discreet.

Say hello to the new Satellite System in v1.7!

There are also so many other improvements in Real HDR 1.7 and I invite you to read them all in Releases Notes page here on this website.
Thank you all for making Real HDR so great with your suggestions!
Luca

PS: I am code-signing the release in this very moment and my colleagues from marketing and Render Academy are preparing something cool for Black Friday -> Cyber Monday. Stay tuned.

The post HDR Generator with Satellite System appeared first on Real HDR.

Article from software development blog – Real HDR (https://www.real-hdr.com)

Imagine if you could procedurally create infinite Animated HDRI Sky. This was my idea some time ago while watching a trailer we made to present the SkyLight module, and since then I started working on a keyframe tool. I spent part of my summer vacations collecting some timelapse and hyper-lapse videos to evaluate the atmosphere and cloud speed during the transition of time. The big part, however, is the flow of the data, since Real HDR 1.5 was not capable to store extra values…obviously since it was not meant to.

So here is the first version of our Real HDR SkyLight Animator to generate Animated HDRI Sky

There are a timeline and two keys, one on the left and one on the right. The animation process is not so different from any other 3D or video software: set the values of time, sun, atmosphere and clouds as you like and press on of the keys; set again the values as you like for the destination of the transition and click on the other key.
Every time you click on a key, its data is overwritten (so think twice before doing so – I mean – there are no hundreds of parameters, but still…).

The timeline is defining the interpolation between the two states and if while sliding you find a more appropriate sky condition for your creations, just press one of the keys to trim the transition.
There is also an editable timeline range and this may be used to refine the “resolution of time”, meaning you can have a higher or lower frame rate.

The EXR exporter does its job as usual, so this new timeline can be used to find a proper mix between two SkyLight states. Anyway, I suppose most of the artists are going to use this new feature for animations so I added two more buttons inside the animator that will manage the exported sequence’s format: PNG or EXR (both are linear, so PNG should be gamma converted later to see the appropriate colors). The sequence exporter exports the frames from the selected one so if you have, let’s say, an animation of 30 frames total and you are on frame 15, it will export only the remaining 15 frames to reach the end. This is cool to resume the process later on.

Lastly, I extended the RHD file format, adding new chunks for the animator values.

So now it is your time: This is the first integration of the animator and I really need your feedback on how you perceive it, the usefulness, what you don’t like and what you want to see next in it. Have fun!

The post Animated HDRI Sky appeared first on Real HDR.

Article from software development blog – Real HDR (https://www.real-hdr.com)

Imagine if you could procedurally create infinite Animated HDRI Sky. This was my idea some time ago while watching a trailer we made to present the SkyLight module, and since then I started working on a keyframe tool. I spent part of my summer vacations collecting some timelapse and hyper-lapse videos to evaluate the atmosphere and cloud speed during the transition of time. The big part, however, is the flow of the data, since Real HDR 1.5 was not capable to store extra values…obviously since it was not meant to.

So here is the first version of our Real HDR SkyLight Animator to generate Animated HDRI Sky

There are a timeline and two keys, one on the left and one on the right. The animation process is not so different from any other 3D or video software: set the values of time, sun, atmosphere and clouds as you like and press on of the keys; set again the values as you like for the destination of the transition and click on the other key.
Every time you click on a key, its data is overwritten (so think twice before doing so – I mean – there are no hundreds of parameters, but still…).

The timeline is defining the interpolation between the two states and if while sliding you find a more appropriate sky condition for your creations, just press one of the keys to trim the transition.
There is also an editable timeline range and this may be used to refine the “resolution of time”, meaning you can have a higher or lower frame rate.

The EXR exporter does its job as usual, so this new timeline can be used to find a proper mix between two SkyLight states. Anyway, I suppose most of the artists are going to use this new feature for animations so I added two more buttons inside the animator that will manage the exported sequence’s format: PNG or EXR (both are linear, so PNG should be gamma converted later to see the appropriate colors). The sequence exporter exports the frames from the selected one so if you have, let’s say, an animation of 30 frames total and you are on frame 15, it will export only the remaining 15 frames to reach the end. This is cool to resume the process later on.

Lastly, I extended the RHD file format, adding new chunks for the animator values.

So now it is your time: This is the first integration of the animator and I really need your feedback on how you perceive it, the usefulness, what you don’t like and what you want to see next in it. Have fun!

The post Animated HDRI Sky appeared first on Real HDR.

Article from software development blog – Real HDR (https://www.real-hdr.com)

In few weeks from now, we should release HDR Sky, a lite version of Real HDR featuring the sole SkyLight Module. The tool will offer the same set of features of the SkyLight mode with the exclusion of the entire PhotoBooth module and it is made for all the 3D Artists involved in architectural pre-viz who maybe do not need the toolset designed for the product lighting.

Anyway, there will be also a new animator tool both for Real HDR and HDR Sky and I’ll write a separate article about that soon. Here some Pictures of HDR Sky.

The post HDR Sky appeared first on Real HDR.

Article from software development blog – Real HDR (https://www.real-hdr.com)

These new Keyboard Inputs of Real HDR 1.6 will add the possibility to insert and edit values using the keyboard. This feature will improve precision and speed when editing the various parameters of the lights…better later than never, I know.

I am also changing the drag&drop loop for the SpriteLights and DarkMarks removing excessive code and math inside the functions of the PhotoBooth module. This won’t bring any visual improvement beside a few milliseconds boost, but knowing that the gears are better oiled makes me feel and work better.

Thanks to some feedback I also patched an annoying “bright stripe” appearing sometime in the key points of the background gradients, and they are now smoother than ever.

The post Keyboard Input appeared first on Real HDR.

Article from software development blog – Real HDR (https://www.real-hdr.com)

3D rendering with real HDR is not completely possible at the moment, but it may be a possibility in the future. The tool has been designed as a fast and reliable utility to create HDRI environments and HDRI skies for 3D rendering.

So even if we are talking about 3D rendering business, Real HDR’s role is for the moment strictly related to the creation of 360° HDR images both in panorama and cubemap layouts.

BUT

there is something new starting from the upcoming release: a 3D mesh importer for the PhotoBooth Module to be used with custom meshes.

• Which 3D file format is supported? at the moment Real HDR will be able to import OBJ files.
• Does the mesh need to be only one? No, there can be multiple meshes in your OBJ file, real HDR will compact them in one block.
• Can I import materials? Not yet, but this can be done in the future.
• Can I edit the materials then? Not in this first preview, but it will be a possibility later.
• How can I scale my mesh in Real HDR? This will be possible for sure in the future but for the moment, the tool expects your meshes to fit in a cube of 1 x 1 x 1 meter
• Is there a limit in the polygons amount? Well, this is difficult since it may vary according to the hardware. There must be a reasonable amount of polygons in your mesh and my suggestion is to import a very simplified version of your mesh.
• When will it be ready? This experimental new feature will be part of the 1.6 release. We have plenty of work to do before releasing it, but the estimated date is between August and mid-September
• Can I share this amazing feature with my friends and colleagues?

I recorded a short video showing this using the famous Stanford Bunny PLY mesh. Please note that it needs to be trimmed and converted before being used in Real HDR.

The post 3D Rendering in Real HDR appeared first on Real HDR.

Article from software development blog – Real HDR (https://www.real-hdr.com)

We are expanding Real HDR to new possibilities and a lot has to come in the upcoming months.
In this blog post, I want to unveil one new feature that kept us awake for some nights: HDRI Cubemaps with Real HDR!

As of today, Real HDR is a fast and quick tool to create HDRI images to be used as background for 3D renderings. These images are used to wrap the scene in a spherical way, giving the illusion of having a real 360° backdrop. Also, being the files in .EXR 32-bit, the brightness described by the pixels goes beyond white and can literally be used to emit light on 3D objects, having a consistent relationship between environment and illumination. Fascinating, but nothing new so far.

Starting from Real HDR 1.6 users will find a new way to define this panorama with the Cubemap Options.
What is a cubemap? well, imagine that the environment surrounding your 3D meshes is not anymore a sphere but a cube and that the texture applied on it is like a six faces UV for a cube.
Which are the benefits? a cubemap has no distortion on the poles and a small increase of quality per mapped surface – or if you prefer – smaller size for the same quality.

/* tech notes
Think about an equirectangular map of 2048×1024 pixels (since we have 360° horizontal and 180° vertical our ration is always 2:1). The total area of the useful pixels, including the distorted ones at the poles, is of ~2 Megapixels. Not much but enough for an HDRI. Considering that in a cubemap we have six faces we can divide 2Mpx by six and have ~350k square pixels. Let’s square root this value and we have 591pixel per side. So we can say that an equirectangular of 2048×1024 pixels is the same as a cubemap with 591×591 pixels per face. Rounding these numbers, just for sake of simplicity, we can say that 2k panorama = 512×512 cubemap with six faces. Basing our development on this, we come out with a faster cubemap exporter that can push the resolution of Real HDR beyond the actual limits.
*/

About the UX we moved the Options Window inside the modules so it is not necessary anymore to keep saving and loading .RHD files, every time you want to change a setting in the main screen.
The Options Window is being expanded with new features (there is one I can’t wait to disclose when ready) and in Real HDR 1.6 users will find the “Export additional Cubemap”. This will enable the .EXR exporter to output a second file.

The layout of the cubemap is defined on the dropdown menu and we have “vertical cross”, “horizontal cross” and “6x layout”. Pick the one you want to use further (eg. V-Ray uses the vertical cross) and go on with your creation.
As last, there is also a “preview overlay” for the cubemap on the working screen. Use this to have a hint of how the layout is going to pack your HDRI Cubemaps with Real HDR.

The post HDRI Cubemaps with Real HDR appeared first on Real HDR.

Article from software development blog – Real HDR (https://www.real-hdr.com)