HDRi Image Renderings

Shadows appear very pronounced in the examples of renderings and video tutorials I have been looking at using HDRi images, but whenever I try to render using HDRi, the shadows are very muted and the renderings seem dark and gloomy. Any thoughts on what settings I need to look at?

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Permalink Reply by Rich Hart on July 20, 2019 at 4:11pm

Try downloading and using an HDRi image from this page that has the type of shadows that you like.

https://hdrihaven.com/hdris/category/?c=skies

See how they work for you.

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Permalink Reply by Phil on July 22, 2019 at 9:10am

Thanks Rich. My problem was that when I select the HDRi sky + background setting, the ‘Sky’ setting is off. Once I click it, the shadows appear.

I have noticed however that the settings for my Render Image Size don’t seem to have any affect on the output. The rendered image is full screen regardless of what setting I select.

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Permalink Reply by Rich Hart on July 23, 2019 at 7:08am

The rendering window always stretches or shrinks the display of rendering to the size of the rendering window, so you can see the whole image display as it's rendering.

You can then use this button to toggle between the the resized view or the actual 1:1 pixel view, if you want to display the actual pixels for the whole rendering. Then you might have to use the scroll bars to see other parts of the image if the render size is larger than the display window.

No matter which display mode is used, the engine is still rendering to the size that you specified, so that when you save the completed rendering you will get an image of that size and resolution.