Planar HDRI background

[Peter Milner]

HDRI background doesn't show up in the walkabout view. This makes it impossible to position and scale correctly.

Can we not have a positioning system similar to that with AR4 where you just drag the edges of the box rather than the X/Y offset and X/Y scale boxes which are trial and error?

 

Peter

[Roy Hirshkowitz]

That's actually encouraging-- you might need to send me the entire thing-- hdr and all (even the photo you used to create the hdr.) I'll take a look. I'd like the drawing just so I can see the WalkAbout view you've got.

[Peter Milner]

I'm uploading it all now.
I've tried other backgrounds and they're not visible either.
However if I choose an image as a sky background on the lighting tab, that does render though it still doesn't show up in walkabout.

[Roy Hirshkowitz]

The WalkAbout bg view is working fine here-- leads me to suspect some sort of AutoCAD driver problem since none of your bitmap bgs show up.

There is still a problem rendering in this model-- investigating now.

Here's what I get when I load your drawing and press WalkAbout--

[Roy Hirshkowitz]

Peter-- from the Visual Styles Manager make sure the background on your Realistic style is set to On.

This won't fix the black rendering-- that's a real one that needs work at my end. Here's what I get when it works-- as much as I like the tree reflections off of the grass and the picture-- they're definitely wrong and probably need to be removed.

[Roy Hirshkowitz]

After 2 hours or so-- no more reflections of the background.

[Peter Milner]

That's a pity because the reflection on the picture looks really odd with nothing but grey outside the window. I'm sure this used to work in AR4.

Peter

[Roy Hirshkowitz]

The only way to get reflections is to have a 3d background-- in nXt that means a spherical hdr. The reflections you see on earlier shots are actually "little windows" through to the background behind that pixel-- they're showing the wrong area of the map. (These incorrect bgs actually still show up if you don't have the path tracer checked.)

[Peter Milner]

Well I don't know what's going on but it's working for me now.
If it goes again I'll try to narrow the problem down. It may have something to do with the walkabout view not always updating.

Peter

[Roy Hirshkowitz]

FYI-- here's what the rendering is doing at 1X and 5X on Channel 8. There is a problem here (I think). I'm not sure the glass is supposed to be reflecting the background-- likely a bug.

[Peter Milner]

Well, it looks like it's all working properly now.

A couple of additions which would be nice are:
Better tools for positioning the background image. Ideally like the Photoshop Transform controls so that you can scale, stretch and distort it to match the model perspective.
Saturation control for the background image in the image editor.

Here's what I get now. The only Photoshop work was to add some glare.

[Roy Hirshkowitz]

I'm assuming you had to really crank the background to unrealistic values to get it so bright. It's not a problem, particularly if you used the Channel multiplier to do it, since the data is still preserved.

I realize what you're trying to do is simulate some of the overexposure inherent to traditional film and video-- this image clearly achieves that and speaks in a language we can understand. What I'm getting at is really twofold-- (1) at some point in the future more tone-ops may be available, such as mapping which mimics film response and (2) the tone mapping that's built in is designed to display an hdr image and therefore show a much wider range of exposure than what's possible with a camera. Both of these options will require more accurate data.

BTW-- if you attach a photo using the little camera thingy on the toolbar the photo will appear in-line in the message.

[Peter Milner]

Yes, I used the image editor to increase the background brightness x 500.
This affected the auto-exposure so I also had to increase the overall brightness.

Thanks for pointing out the camera thingy. I'll use it next time.