On screen positioning of HDR backgrounds.

[kwistenbiebel]

Hi KT'ers,

With Frederick backing me up on this one, a tool to better position a HDR background to match with a scene would be great.

This would make it possible e.g to match the models ground plane to the HDR background groundplane etc...
Also it can be useful for lowering the horizon of a background in cases that the models groundplane isn't infinite (an infinite groundplane in KT should be on the wishlist as well?)

Maybe it is not so easy to implement because HDR files often are very big files (over 50 Mb in some cases).
So maybe the mapping needs to be done with a smaller dummy image (.jpg)in Kt as a reference to the real HDR file?

I imagine the mapping of the background could work similar as the 'coordinate bitmap' window?

cheers and thanks,
Kwistenbiebel

[jendrzych]

I sign here with both of my hands, legs and whatever...

Such feature would be really useful.

[giannis]

eh? but this is done automatically now, right?
i mean, centering of the image or wrapping it to a (hemi)sphere.

where is the (currently) manual effort?

[jendrzych]

I dream about possibility of rotating HDRI manually on the screen just to match position of the sun at the HDRI/LDRI picture with position of KT's sun. Sometimes it could be useful to rotate spherical/hemispherical sky map just to find most appropriate shot frame without moving KT's sun...

[Frederik]

Yes - I fully support kwistenbiebel and jendrzych!
Fletch has also mentioned this some time ago.

[alex]

[dsarchs]

I know this is a (very) old thread, but it's the closest to dealing with the question I had.

Is there a way to create a material that would be invisible but would catch shadows? That way you could place a ground plane below an object in an HDR render and the object could still cast a realistic shadow.

If it's NOT possible I would request it be added to any future updates (although I'm not sure how quickly those will be coming with THEA coming out).