Indigo Renderer Forum

Wanted to know is there a way of using HDRi in the enviroment lightning but so that the HDRI does not show up as background just the light comming from it and hiting the model?

i;am using maxigo 3.07 and 3ds max 2012 x64

You can insert a simple surface which covers the background...

Otherwise you can render the alpha channel for the scene/object and use the resulting mask to isolate the subject.

Indigo will always render and show what is in the scene. There is currently no direct option to have objects contributing to the scene while being strictly invisible.

cotty wrote:You can insert a simple surface which covers the background...

This will not work in many cases. If the camera axis is horizontal or tilted up, doing so will also mask part of the sky and alter the lighting

thx all for the info

btw in certain situations alpha mask is not as good like in 3ds max (render elements) alpha

use scanline to render alpha

hi dcm,
would you please explain a little more this "scanline" option ?
I just would like to render with HDRI illumination and no compositing, ONE PASS,
like "transparent film" in Cycles.
Is that possible ?

This title is too funny

dr_ wrote:hi dcm,
would you please explain a little more this "scanline" option ?
I just would like to render with HDRI illumination and no compositing, ONE PASS,
like "transparent film" in Cycles.
Is that possible ?

The scanline option is a 3dsMax rendering mode wich does therefore not relate with Indigo directly. Also It is not much relevant anymore since Indigo now has compositing abilities.

Could you please depict better what you want to achieve ? It is sounding like, huh, nothing special to me atm

hi CTZ,
I did try many times to find out how it works.
It seems too me that if you put the object too far from he background it makes everything white..
but alpha transparency works.

The hard part is to mix/blend environment lighting and sun.
The sun "cover" everything, independently of the setting I use (in my version).
see screenshot. (skindigo_sun_mix). It does not work even if I edit in the Indigo interface.

So i did try this "workaround" : I want to have sun AND Environment illumination together.
Like here:
http://www.indigorenderer.com/forum/dow ... &mode=view

But it does not work in my version... (v3.6.26, OS X 64-bit build)

At this point I'd rather let SketchUp users answer you. If they don't soon enough you could raise this issue into the Exporters>SU sub-forum.

This is how I use the HDRI and sun lighting with Skindigo:

- In the Skindigo environment settings choose your HDRI, I prefer exr-files.
- "Add sun" should be selected
- Set the environment weight to about 100000 (depends on your exr, in most cases this works for me)
- Set the sun weight to about 0.0001 (just as an an approximate value, need to play with it)
- Render and save file as tif, this gives you an alpha channel.
- Use the alpha channel on your backplate picture in your photo editor.

Still don't understand why the values for exr and sun need to be set like this, but it works.

Hope this helps.
Lars

thank you lars,
it works also for me.
Daniele