I’m thinking about purchasing HDR Light Studio from HDRLightStudio.com. Does anyone have any experience or advice with this product? I have a photography background and it looks intriguing to be able to use familiar lights (soft boxes, etc) for lighting a product. I don’t know if Mental Ray or V-Ray offers the same realism for product photography, but I’m curious to know your thoughts.

Thanks.

HDRLS doesn’t render anything other than the HDR environment file, so you still have to use Mental Ray/Vray/etc to see the results of that lighting applied to your models in Max. In their shaver demo video they’re using a semi-realtime rendering program (Hypershot) which doesn’t have much of a user interface except the output window, so it can look like it’s all part of HDRLS (which it’s not).

If you’re rendering in Max and absolutely have to replicate a certain studio light setup (their Max demo with a car is one example where the precise light positions are vital to the overall result) then HDRLS is a good addition; but if you just want realism you can download hundreds of free HDR images from the web - some of them made in HDRLS - and it’s not too hard to find one that fits. My biggest peeve with v1.5 is that you still can’t load an existing image as the base layer, so your rendered reflections are just of the light units. We can merge HDRs externally or in an MR shader, but it’d be nice to be able to take a probe into HDRLS and fake back in the light bulbs where they appear in the photo, so we get real details in the reflections from chrome etc. Currently it just lets you fake a sky and floor with gradient sliders.

Personally I’d say if you’re skilled at using HDR setups in Max but fust can’t find that exact light array you need, then fine - but otherwise spend the time learning from the HDRs you can grab online, and then you can work out if HDRLS is worth the investment for your particular needs. It certainly isn’t an instant-fix solution to making ultra-awesome renders.

:: UVSAR :: Dave Merchant :: Adobe Community Professional ::