Indigo Renderer Forum

When lighting a scene with an HDRI map, there's a lot of trial and error trying to position the camera and the scene objects and lights to match or complement the light source(s) in the map. Is there a way to set up the map in C4D so that I can rotate it and see the result of the rotation in real-time, and have the changes pass through to Indigo when it's time to render? I'm talking WYSIWYG or ETLAT here!

Jeff

I already requested a overhaul of the HDRI background system to use a C4D sky based approach for direct visual feedback, maybe it will come one day

But until this happens you can do the following thing:

Create a C4D sky and put your EnvMap with the HDRI in the diffuse channel on it.
This represents the Indigo sky output 1:1...
Not you need to put your whole scene (with cameras!) into a xyz @ 1 Null Object and then rotate that
to have a desired result in the viewport.
Set the sky object to "do not render" and render the scene in indigo

Zom-B wrote:I already requested a overhaul of the HDRI background system to use a C4D sky based approach for direct visual feedback, maybe it will come one day

But until this happens you can do the following thing:

Create a C4D sky and put your EnvMap with the HDRI in the diffuse channel on it.
This represents the Indigo sky output 1:1...
Not you need to put your whole scene (with cameras!) into a xyz @ 1 Null Object and then rotate that
to have a desired result in the viewport.
Set the sky object to "do not render" and render the scene in indigo

That's screaming for a ' lightbulb' joke! If only I was funny enough to make one...

Zom-B wrote:Create a C4D sky and put your EnvMap with the HDRI in the diffuse channel on it.
This represents the Indigo sky output 1:1...
Not you need to put your whole scene (with cameras!) into a xyz @ 1 Null Object and then rotate that
to have a desired result in the viewport.
Set the sky object to "do not render" and render the scene in indigo

After some tweaking, here's what worked:
1. Set the Sky material to a higher resolution than "default". Default is incredibly pixelated in the viewport.
2. The EnvMap in the Sky object is a mirror image of the Background Material in the Indigo Renderer. Set the Z-Scale of the Sky object to -1.
3. The EnvMap is rotated 90 degrees around the Y-axis in the Sky object compared to Indigo's BG material. Set the Heading of the Sky object to -90.

The only thing left for me to find out is how to set the Sky object to "do not render". Is it as simple as setting the Sky's Basic | Visible in Renderer control to Off? Or does it involve settings in the Material tag, the Render Settings or a Compositing tag?

Thanks for the instructions, Zom-B. The 1:1 rotation works a treat!

Jeff

JeffBDVS wrote:The only thing left for me to find out is how to set the Sky object to "do not render". Is it as simple as setting the Sky's Basic | Visible in Renderer control to Off?

Cindigo does use these small red/green dots to control render visibility too

Thanks.

Jeff