Can anyone with a bit of technical knowledge explain why some HDRI's are way too strong in reflections and some are way to dull.
For example, I often find getting the lighting/exposure right with PGSkies results in super bright reflections, but yesterday I was experimenting with the Poliigon HDRI's and found the opposite. Once lighting and exposure looked correct, the reflections were incredibly dull?
Everything is physically based. Some HDRIs have a strong highlight, but weak surrounding in comparison (eg. direct sun light). If you expose for the sun, the surrounding get's very dark in comparison and seems to reflect weaker, because you turned exposure way down.
To combat this you can use HDR Compression on the image before piping it into the environment, thus the sun get's less bright and the surrounding instead appears more clearly.
This dynamic changes from image to image, as each image has a different... dare I say it... dynamic range.
Also be very careful when importing HDRs with how the Gamma is layed out. Usually you have to import with gamma 1.0, but I have seen HDRs exported with a gamma curve and when you import them in 3dsMax with gamma 1.0 they appear utterly dark everywhere where it isn't a bright spot.
If that doesn't clear it, post some screenshots of the offending scene, so we can nail down exactly what is happening.
