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Illuminating with an HDRI environment

Illuminating with an HDRI environment - 3ds Max Tutorial

From the course: 3ds Max 2024 Essential Training

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Illuminating with an HDRI environment

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The next level up in environment light is a panorama of a high dynamic range image or HDRI. This is also known as image-based lighting or IBL. We can apply an image to our environment and that will provide a background and also illuminate the scene. But it does need to be a high dynamic range image to work well. That means that the pixel values represent physical intensities of light. If you just drop an ordinary image into the environment slot, you're not going to get good results. It needs to be a special HDR image in order to properly illuminate the scene. Let's add one. In the rendering menu, choose Environment. In the Common Parameters rollout, we'll see a slot for Environment Map. Click the big button labeled None and we get the Material Map Browser. I want to navigate to Maps, OSL, Environment, and choose HDRI Environment. And that's a special map type. It has color correction controls for high dynamic range images. With that selected, click OK. We get another dialog in which…

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