Overall Observations
This huge “360×180 Panosphere HDRI ”, needs 8 frames to get made: 6 horizontals, 1 from the sky and a last one for the ground. Each frame (HDRI) is made from a set of 9 bracketing pictures, starting at stop -4 and ending at stop +4.
Du to the extreme largeness of this Panosphere, the pack includes a single .hdr and no other High Dynamic Range format.
The Quality
With 69 Mega pixels (11748×5874 pix), the background pixels coverage is there! You’re free to place your 3D camera anywhere, and render without using black plates. In fact, this will bring you the necessary freedom for animating your scenes.
Also, keep in mind that this is an almost nighttime scene, and the light changes very fast during the sunrise… These are not good conditions to get fine LDRIs (Low Dynamic Range Image)
More About…
Geographical Information /
Gleneagles Golf Course
6190 Marine Dr,
West Vancouver, BC / Canada
Camera Latitude 49°21’52.52”N / Longitude 123°16’48.24”W
Shooting Time 05:48 am (before Sunrise)
Shooting Day 09/01/2011
8 HDRi were necessary to get this Panosphere.
Etch Basic HDRI Frame was merged from 9 pictures of that frame,
exposed with these values: 32s, 16s, 8s, 4s,2s, 1s, 0.5s, 0.25s, 0.125s
6 HDRi to fill the horizontal line (6frames x 9pictures = 54 pictures)
1 HDRi to fill the sky (9 pictures)
1 HDRI to fill the nadir (ground view)
… But in did, the pano-head and the tripod, both holding the shooting camera,
get included in those nadir set. This is why 3 set of 9 pictures must be made
while the camera’s looking down, producing 3 HDRI .
So 3 HDRI were edited in my picture editor in order to get a Nadir HDR view, cleaned from holding camera materials.
In conclusion, 81 shots, 4288×2848 pix each, were used to get this Panosphere HDRI .
Bonus
The 3ds max scene file, used to create those preview images with a building, is also provided with this package. I hope this is going to help you to set your HDRI scenes with Vray.