I am looking for a well balanced set of HDRI images I can use in Carrara 8 pro. CHEAP I hope any advice! I was looking at the ones on DAZ but they are very restricted!
Not sure if they are still available...but look at the Christmas thread, 3DWorld had a couple then and Christmas 2011 ones stuck around forever.
If you have some photo editing software capable of working in 32bit mode and HDRI export,. like Photoshop,..
then you can make your own.
Carrara can also be used to create images to use as HDR for scene background, reflection and lighting,.
Note: Carrara can use Colour values, Colour gradients,. any Images, and HDR images in the background channel,. and all of them will be used as the light source, and provide scene reflections,.. as long as the Sky Light option is enabled in the renderer settings.
this is a Daz3D car (prince) in a scene with a plane with a "shadow catcher" shader.
The background is a 360 spherical environment render of a scene I made in Carrara, converted to HDRI in Photoshop.
Although there's also the default "Distant" light (set to around 30 - 40),..to add direct lighting for better specular highlights, and to provide the direct shadowing.
Most of the lighting and all of the reflections, come from the Background image.
Are you looking for scenes or lighting?
I really need to post some of my HDRI lighting on carraracafe. I designed them to have HDRI light with out actually having a scene. Basically for character lighting.
"If you have some photo editing software capable of working in 32bit mode and HDRI export,. like Photoshop,..
The scene started out as an experiment with the new multilayer shader in 8.5,. I was trying to make a procedural concrete shader , then I realised I'd need some walls n' stuff. and now I just keep adding things to it..
then set the options and Photoshop makes the 32bit hdri.
save,. and load into Carrara.
You can also simply change the image mode in Photoshop to 32bit, and save it as an HDRI, although it doesn't have as much of the full range of light information,. it'll work pretty well.
thanks for the details, weird thing is a think Elements has it as well and I never noticed!
This sample video uses my night-time Spherical City with clouds as a scene background.
The following images use my daytime Spherical City as Image based lighting using the Skylight in the render room. I did use a distant light for specular effects.
If you've purchased the Advanced Techniques in Carrara, instructed by our own PhilW, you likely learned it from him - for he teaches it just like you say, and offers his work as a great set of reference materials - or you can even use them in your own scenes.
I swear, with all of the hand-made-in-Carrara content he provides in the working files folder, that set is a real steal of a deal!