HDRI's feel like they're over-exposed?

[eaglerulez]

Hi there,

I have a project that needs a fairly prominent blue sky in it, with a few clouds in the air as well.

Something similar to the attached would be best.

I've found quite a few great looking HDRI's that look like they can do the trick. However whenever I bring them into my scene they look very washed out and unnatural. When used in the environmental slot, they emit great looking light properties but the skies themselves just don't look blue.

I've tried playing around with tone mapping, brightness and contrast, saturation, ev settings, etc. no matter what I seem to do a deep blue seems unobtainable.

Am I missing something here?

I can of course do a sky replacement in photoshop, but would really rather be able to do this the renderer.

Any thoughts?

[aaouviz]

Hi,

I'm not sure if this is the best method or not, but what I usually do is plug the sky into a color correction (and lower exposure to about -2) which is then put into my 'direct visibility' environment override.

I think this is a goo start for you at least...

I'd love to hear how others deal with this too.

[Designerman77]

Hi,

I'm not sure if this is the best method or not, but what I usually do is plug the sky into a color correction (and lower exposure to about -2) which is then put into my 'direct visibility' environment override.

I think this is a goo start for you at least...

I'd love to hear how others deal with this too.

Yes, that's how I also deal with this.

However, manipulating the sky in the override slot too much - so that it does not correlate with the light colors coming from the actual HDR -  is very quickly visible in a render... starts looking artificial.
That ´s what you see in a lot of exterior arch viz.
Then the scene starts to look like a collage...

[maru]

There isn't much philosophy here. A black enviro will give you no light, a white enviro will give you white light, intensity will make lighting stronger or weaker.
You can either adjust the HDRI itself using Output, 3ds Max Color Correction, or Corona Color Correct, or use a different map/color for the environment lighting and direct visibility.
You can also try with Corona's Sun + Sky (especially with the new V6 model, which has less green tint than the previous one). It provides easier control over sun position and sun/sky intensities.