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Hi everybody. So I like to use room interior HDRIs and a culling camera to provide ambient light, with a stock photo in the background for a window, which I can get away with if all the windows are facing in one direction. The problem happens when I have environments where the windows face in different directions.
I guess I should mention that I hate HDRIs for providing backgrounds for my interior environments. It seems like unless somebody goes onto a vacant lot in a suburban area and makes an HDRI, your environment is always going to look like you're in the middle of the street, or park, or empty meadow, or wherever other easily accessible place the person took the photos from. And forget about a second floor environment unless somebody takes those photos from the middle of a vacant lot in a bucket truck.
So my idea is this: some of these assets have skydomes. I have neighborhood exterior assets. My idea is to merge a big ground plane with the dome and make it all into a single surface to texture. Next I put the area where my house will go dead center in the scene. I take all of those neighborhood assets and bring them into the scene so it's as far as the eye can see, even from a second floor vantage point. I take a 360 degree photo from the center, but instead taking three at different exposure values to make an HDR, I just texture the surface of the dome/ground with the 360 degree photo. Then I have my 360 degree background that looks like I'm in a neighborhood surrounded by a yard, but I can use whatever room interior HDRs with my culling camera without affecting what I see out of the windows or having to use stock photos. Is this doable? And how would I go about merging the dome and the ground plane, then turning it all into one surface? I'm cool with packing so many objects in the scene that it takes all day to render if this would actually work.
Also, if you know of any HDRs that actually look like they're on an empty suburban lot from all angles, could you point me in that direction? I've been scouring the internet and can't find any.
Thank you in advance for any responses.
What are the advantage of using the skydome instead of a custom hdri?
Whenever I have an environment that I will use for a certain number of renders, I first create an hdri and use it for the background of all my scenes.
There are several advantages. HDRI are good for a fast rendering, and you can easily tailor it to your need. Want an hdri for the background of a rooftop party? Put your camera at a 10 or 15m height before creating the hdri. Is it to show the exterior view of a restaurant, put the camera on the ground. Need an early morning scene? Recreate a new hdri with the proper lighting. Ditto for night scenes.
Making one's own hdri is very simple, and if you render more than 4 or 5 scenes with it it is a good time saver.Rank:Well the advantage of a skydome would be that I could use whatever room interior HDRI lighting for ambient light that I wanted without it affecting the background through the window. I find it useful for scenes at night. And yes, they are great for fast rendering. I use them all the time with the culling camera. The camera doesn't "see" any of the walls or objects that aren't in the camera's view, so the interior light HDR comes through as ambient light that I can turn up or down as needed.
The problem is that when I switch to an interior light HDR, there goes any HDR background I had. Now you see an orange blob out the window instead of the meadow that I found to put the house in. Using a stock photo background through the window would be no big deal except for when there are windows on multiple walls. Then I'd have to take a field trip, ask a property owner to go onto their property, and take photos looking outward from each side of their house at the same time of day to texture onto planes and put in front of the windows.
I've found HDRIs that look sort of like they're a front yard from the front. So I'm taking the photo from the living room and it looks fine. The background through the sliding glass door, however, looks like it's right up next to a fence. That kind of thing.
So best of both worlds: consistent background 360 degrees and the ability to use my HDRs without losing that background. Plus a lot less hassle than poking around on Polyhaven all freaking day.
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