Using multiple HDRI's for lighting.

[Xntric]

Is there any way to use multiple HDRIs environments maps for lighting up an object?

Then i could control the light from each hdri with lightmixer in post.

If not, the solution must be to make multiple renders and then blend them together in photoshop afterwards, but it would be nice if I could it in 1 render.

[FlorianW.]

+1

To be honest, i love Corona, but i have no clue why there is no dome. Especially for fast LookDev its a must have to set up multiple HDRI and then blend them easily. The funny thing is, its already working with sun and sky system but not with HDRI. I hope this will get changed at some point.

[sprayer]

You can draw lights in hdri in plugins like HDR Light Studio, and even more, you can place reflection directly at your model similar to keyshot

[Xntric]

Yeah, the thing is that I want multiple hdri lighting the object at the same time in the render.

[PROH]

Hi. This has been discussed several times before on this forum, and the bottom line is, that the lightmix can't handle more than one environment at the time. The same goes for the sun and daylight systems, and for background images.

It can however handle a bunch of different direct lights used as "sun", but this won't give you a physical correct environment.

Hope it helps.

[Xntric]

Alright, I hope they will add in the future though.

[Xntric]

and the reason why I want to render with multiple HDRIs, is that I want to have each HDRI as a render element so that I can mix the lighting in photoshop with masks afterwards.

Like in car photography they often take multiple shots of the car throughout the day to get different lighting, and then they can mix it together in photoshop afterwards. Maybe they like the lighting on the front in one of the pictures, but another picture has better lighting in the back, so they will add that light with masks.

My workaround has been to render 4 times, each with a rotated dome light. But it would be nice if I could do it in one render, instead of having to render 4 times.

[Xntric]

Last thursday our school had a visit from a guy from Sunday digital, who is making BMW commercials. I showed him my work, and got some feedback. In my scene i had simply rendered a car using HDRI lighting with a matching backplate. He said that, what they typically do is add additional fake lighting to the scene, or rotating the HDRI and making multiple renders and then combine them in photoshop.

He also said, that when they make photography of cars outside, normally what they do is that they get to the location early in the morning and start shooting photos there, and then take shots throughout the day so that they have different lighting. Sometimes they also rotate the car a bit, to get lighting to hit other sides of the car, or maybe get a nice light gradient on the side etc. so they can mix that in photoshop.
They also some fake lighting like you said with flash- and spotlights.

I'm no expert, but it has seemed to work for me.

I've attached a photo that shows before and after of using 4 renders each with the same HDRI just different rotations. I think it has improved the lighting.

[sprayer]

If you want to improve your lighting and make it look professional : Get some Professional/High quality HDRI+Matched Backplates, add additional lights (area lights enough for you to start with, and it's what most pros uses).

this all in tutorials at youtube corona channel, Ludvik perfectly explains

list=PLt4UrWcQaAX-k40KpVTt-EMorC_mOfieR

[Juraj]

There are few options how to mix HDRi in single scene, although none currently for LightMix.

1) Using CoronaMix in linear mode you can mix two HDRi in any way you want, multiply/lighten/etc...  You can individually rotate each, set their color/contrast/,etc..
2) Using Composite you can not only mix multiple HDRis (as many as you want) but also mask them. You can keep Layer1 as diffuse skylight and Layer2 as sunlight and voila ! You have "Sun&Sky" system with HDRi !

Example on how you would use this for visualization of cars would be as follow: Use layer1 as base environment HDRi (cityscape, forest, road,etc..). Use Layer2 on top with Add mode of studio setup created for example in HDRI STUDIO. This way you can keep independent control of your natural light and additional studio lights.

As personal opinion, mixing different times of day of natural light looks very strange. I've never seen this in workflow of any car retoucher. They do blend and mix a lot lights but always at least in slightly natural way.

[Xntric]

They must be taking different shots yes but never saw someone mixing morning sun light with after noon and sunset night light. It will look like crap to be honest. It's not even natural, not at all and I never saw that yet on any commercials.

I'm pretty sure that's what he said, maybe the tint the light, so it won't have morning sun colours, or I don't know.

If you want to improve your lighting and make it look professional : Get some Professional/High quality HDRI+Matched Backplates, add additional lights (area lights enough for you to start with, and it's what most pros uses).

Thanks, I'll try to do that for the future. Unfortunately, good HDRI's are expensive for a student like me. I'd love to get some feedback from you on the lighting in the picture I have attached to this if you don't mind.

If you are looking at automotive resources I made a place for that. You have a category on the left called RESOURCES : https://discord.gg/DEUuNs7

I'll definitely be checking that out, thanks.

[Jpjapers]

Doesnt that new Pulze plugin allow you to set different environments for different cameras?

https://pulze.io/

[bucketstudio]

I test using sphere dome mesh with corona light material and hdri inside works perfectly and you can use lightmix, but the problem is you only see the background of 1 dome, cause on lightmix if you turnoff the dome light mesh u see BLACK so u can have several domes but only one is visible other ones just light the scene

[FlorianW.]

I test using sphere dome mesh with corona light material and hdri inside works perfectly and you can use lightmix, but the problem is you only see the background of 1 dome, cause on lightmix if you turnoff the dome light mesh u see BLACK so u can have several domes but only one is visible other ones just light the scene

Well, thanks for testing. At least we have a dummy fix for this problem now, even with the limitations as you just described! I hope there will be a solution at some point, because i can't understand why others don't need that. For example even on Archviz: Had a interior project, where we visualized to cameras, one northside of the building, one southside. The Cams are set up in Batch menu with scene states to be superquick jumping between shots in viewport and be faster when submitting to our renderfarm, but then, i want diffrent HDRI's to have specific lighting on these 2 cameras , Problem!

Thanks for Testing, bucketstudio!

[dzintas]

Thanks, I'll try to do that for the future. Unfortunately, good HDRI's are expensive for a student like me. I'd love to get some feedback from you on the lighting in the picture I have attached to this if you don't mind.

Bit late on the whole discussion, but try out https://hdrihaven.com/. All HDRI's are free for personal and professional use.