Setting up a scene with HDRI Lighting
Back to home / View commentsIn this tutorial we will run through the basics of setting up a scene with HDRI lighting.
Using HDRI lighting has its pros and cons. If you use it, you can archive stunningly realistic renders, without having to set up a complex lighting rig. However, it can cause very long rendering times.
Note: This tutorial is only for people with the Advanced Render Plug-in that comes with most editions of Cinema 4D.
Get an High Dynamic Range Image
The first step in setting up HDRI lighting is to find an High Dynamic Range Image. These are NOT Images rendered WITH HDRI (as SOME people may think…). They are their own format. You will find these images with a “*.hdr” extension.
You can find many very high quality and resolution probes here. A Probe is just a type of HDRI which encompasses a large view.
If you lay the probe flat and looked at it, it would look like this :
This will be the Probe I will be using for this tutorial.
Now, as you can see by looking at it, it has odd black stuff around the edges, and if we stuck that as out lighting now, it would be uneven, and unrealistic. Luckily Cinema 4D has a solution for that.
With that being said, open up Cinema 4D. When it loads, go to Plug-in > Advanced Render > Convert HDR Probe. It will open a file box. Navigate to your hdr file and open it.
This will convert all of the verities on the picture, to that of a 3D sphere. When it’s done it will pop up with the finished image. You can simply close that. If you look in the directory that the .hdr file was in, you will now see a con.hdr file as well. That is the file we will be using to light our scene.
Setting up the Scene
if you have a premade scene, feel free to use that. If not, then simply create a Floor object, drag it down 100m on the Y-axis, then create a Sphere.
Create a new material, named it ball, leave the colour as white, and change the brightness to 100%. Uncheck Specular, and check Reflection. Change the reflection brightness to 6%.
Duplicate the Ball texture, and name the second one Floor. On the floor texture, check the Bump, and add a Noise texture. Change the Noise type to FBM, and the Octaves to 6.1. click on Bump again, and change the strength to -7 %.
Now add the Ball material to the Sphere, and the floor to the floor. Now our very basic scene is done, and if done right should look something like this:
Setting up the Lighting
On to the fun part. Start off by creating a sphere. Then resize it so that all of you scene fits inside it (for the example scene, giving this sphere a Radius of about 1200m should work fine).
Now duplicate that sphere (Ctrl+c, Ctrl+v). Name one sphere GI, and the Other one Visible. As the names suggest, one of the spheres will be visible when we render and the other one will be for GI (GI stands for Global Illumination).
Create the materials needed for the light
Create a new Material. Name it Visible. Turn off all of the channels except Luminance. After that, go to luminance, and apply your con.hdr as the texture. As you can see, it’s a bit bright, so we are going to tone it down a bit. We can do this by setting the Brightness to 0%, and set the Mix to 50%. Then it should look like this:
Now duplicate this material, and name the duplicate GI. The only change we are going to make to this one is setting the MIP Blur Offset in the Luminance Channel, to 10%. By doing this, it evens out the light, so when its rendered it will not look as blotchy.
Now, apply the GI material to the GI sphere, and the Visible material to the Visible Sphere.
Setting up the spheres
Now we will have to change some settings for our spheres. So right click on the Visible Sphere in the Object browser, and go to Cinema 4D tags > Compositing. Click on the tag. Make sure only the following are checked:
Seen by Camera, Seen by Rays, Seen by Transparency and finally Seen by Reflection.
Once that’s done, also add a Compositing tag to the GI sphere, and make sure only the “Seen by GI” is checked.
Now, after all of that complicated work, your Object Browser should look like this. (if not then you messed up). Our scene is finished now, now we only need to set the correct rendering settings.
Rendering
If you tried to render it now, well it would look like a normal every day render. But that’s not what we want, we are going for Photorealism. So for that we are going to need some Global Illumination.
Open up the Render Settings, and go to the Global Illumination tab (Note: On the older versions of Cinema 4D it was called Radiosity) and turn it on. Now, you could spend a half hour messing with the settings, tweaking them to get them just right… OR you could use these:
Once that’s all sorted out, click on Options, and make sure you turn off Auto Light. If you don?t, your scene will looked all messed up.
And now for the usual end stuff. Click on Antaliasing, and change it to Best. Click on Output, and change the Size to 800×600. Go to Save, and pick a path to a safe place, and change the format to JPEG.
This is my final result:
To sums things up here is a quick reference guid you can use in the feature:
- Create 2 spheres (Visible and GI) that go around your whole scene
- Create a new material, turn off everything except luminance and add your HDRI image.
- Apply this material to your 2 spheres
- Visible Sphere > Compositing: Seen by Camera/ Rays/ Transparency & Reflection
- GI Sphere > Compositing: Seen by GI
- Render settings: Turn on Global Illumination and turn off global lighting
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39 Comments
September 16, 2008
Whewwww you guys really know what you are doing, I just started C4D and with your tutorials, i really appreciate what the programme can do!
October 18, 2008
it sucks on saving it always save as .aec even i change it it always coem out as .aec suckS!
October 28, 2008
This was a great tutorial and I was able to do it on one of my computers and then I went to work and tried it on another and for some reason when I went to render settings global illumination wasn’t highlighted thus preventing me from rendering it properly. Any suggestions?
October 29, 2008
Same as Roi, Only want to save as .aec
Pleaaaase heeelp!
November 4, 2008
for global illumination you need the advanced render module installed. check if it is so.
November 4, 2008
And for the .aec problem. Well not sure but it must be about after effects. Make sure you didn’t check ” Compositing Project File” in the save tab. It is near the bottom, after effects is selected after it.
November 4, 2008
Alternatively you can save the image from the picture viewer after the render is finished. The save tab makes it automatic.
November 16, 2008
I Have R10 And I Cant Find The Advanced Render Under Plug-Ins I Have to Render>Convert HDR Probe….Is It Because Of the new Release Or What?
November 16, 2008
NVM I Dont Have Advanced Render Anyone Know Where I Could Get A Free Download Or Add-On
December 4, 2008
Hi,
Thanks for this tutorial. Because the GI options has completely changed in C4D 11, could some explain me which options to use? My rendering has no brightness…
Thanks.
December 20, 2008
Hi Gwendal,
We will be putting out a tutorial soon on HDRI lighting using the new C4D R11 global illumination features. Stay tuned …
February 9, 2009
@Realistic – still waiting LOL
February 13, 2009
Yeah having trouble with R11.
February 20, 2009
Yeah, havin the same problem. They really complicated everything in C4D R11
February 26, 2009
r11 just gives you render>convert options. same thing
more options gives you more flexibility. don’t be scared. just fiddle around with the options. there’s no 1 answer the the GI settings. if you look, there’s still accuracy and stochastic options, similar to scrn grab above. suck it up and experiment
February 26, 2009
r11 desperates.. (like me) remember to open up the lists and look inside.. there’s a small triangle arrow next to each of them for the GI!
February 26, 2009
yay I made it!! looks just like in your picture.. did with r11.. guys, just open up all the subfolders with the little arrow on the side in the GI menu and you will find almost everything.. you just have to fiddle around a bit.
March 7, 2009
Hey, thanks for the tut, it’s great. Although I have the same problem as D-roolz with the no advanced rendering options. I have tried searching the web to try and find the plugin but no luck. I am using C4D R10, anyone know of a link to the plugin?
Thanks!
March 12, 2009
It is an amazing tutorial, and i have tried many times but i can’t get the same result, i don’t see the shadow in my render, and i don’t know what going on:|
Can please some one help me?
P.S. Excuses for my bad English!
April 11, 2009
Very nice tutorial
April 12, 2009
same as Thijs Kremers. i would like to know how to add shadows with that hdr
April 29, 2009
For something worth 2k C4D looks like a chewy toy for retards in the lines of DAZ studio, think I will stick to 3ds Max a while longer. I just can’t get over the bubbly feel of it, I honestly don’t know how people use this thing or even take it seriously.
May 15, 2009
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June 3, 2009
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June 23, 2009
funny. i think the same exactly thing about 3ds max
June 30, 2009
[...] Setting Up a Scene with HDRI Lighting [...]
August 26, 2009
I like to know how to make High Dynamic Range Image for use in C4D in first place. Can you help please ?
October 2, 2009
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November 24, 2009
Hi!
Thanks for the great tutorial.
I started out using one of your suggested HDRI’s but they were to small and didnt work with my scene for osem reason, part of the light probe in the background was black. SO instead I d/l:ed a 50Mb REALLY super huge HDRI I found. The result was great … but with this new HDRI the background is not blurred at all. Which makes it look odd. Any idea why the blur should go away if you load a new HDRI?
Thanks!
December 30, 2009
@Stormfrog – Try some depth of field, sounds like the background isn’t blurred properly because of the size of the image (vs the rendered resolution), you can blur it (the visible one) in the material settings, but that would also result in the reflections being blurred as well…. so uhm… I guess you can try 1. Blurring the visible sphere. Or 2. Create a third sphere, which will be seen by the camera, and have the 2nd sphere visible only to reflections and not the camera.
I know all that sounds like a bunch of crap, but there’s an easy solution, just trial and error. If the HRDI has to be visible in the background of the render, you can always blur as much (or as little) as you want in Photoshop or so, after rendering.
If you want the reflections to be slightly blurred as well, you can always do that in the material’s settings.
January 18, 2010
Dont know if anyone still visits this site, but im having a problem with the spheres covering the whole scene. Im probably doing something really silly but when i render i cant see anything…u kno like i was inside a massive sphere….thanks
January 21, 2010
[...] http://cinema4dtutorials.com/misc/hdri-lighting/ [...]
March 5, 2010
@Jewishpope – Make sure you’re setting the radius of the GI and Visible spheres, not just setting the size. When the radius is set to 1200 m, the size of the spheres will be 2400 m. If that doesn’t do it, just zoom in a little until you can see the original sphere and floor objects.
April 5, 2010
[...] | Amateur Media | Greyscale Gorilla | Cgtuts + | Weecast | MediaPixel | Cinema4D tutorials [...]
April 13, 2010
hi i have ver. 11.5, and i followed your instructions to the “i”. (please not that the global illumination feature was laid out differently).
However, when i set the save tab to the location where i want the jpeg pic to be, and i close the c4d file, i am not seeing any produced jpeg file.
Is there something else i need to do?
April 21, 2010
[...] Cinema 4D Rendering Tutorial-Setting up a scene with HDRI Lighting [...]
June 4, 2010
[...] what render / lighting settings to use to create a realistic looking render I suggest you to read this tutorial. With it you can achieve stunningly results like [...]
June 18, 2010
[...] zijn je renders ultrarealistisch. Deze video van Amateurmedia is alvast een goede start. Ook deze geschreven tutorial legt de HDRI-principes helder [...]
July 7, 2010
yeah! trouble in saving..:(
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