Final Minor: HDRi Sky Domes

The acronym HDRI stands for High Dynamic Range Image, essentially, HDR Images are images that have a dynamic range far greater than the 0-255 range that we are currently used to using in our traditional computer based images, this means that images using the 0-255 range cannot display the dynamic range accurately (The contrast ratio between darkest and brightest regions).

An HDR Image has an important property in that their pixel values are proportional to the amount of light in the world corresponding to that pixel, unlike most regular images whose pixel values are nonlinearly encoded, HDR pixels use floating point numbers, which are capable of representing light quantities of one to a million and beyond. As mentioned earlier, Low Dynamic Range Images usually represent pixels using only eight bits per channel, with the pixel values ranging as integers from between 0 and 255 respectively.

Because of the greater range capable of within HDR Images, these types of images are able to store accurate lighting values, and by using these images in conjunction with Global Illumination, Final Gathering, etc, you can produce extremely realistic and warm looking images than that which could be created with a low dynamic range.

In order to light my scene correctly I will need a series of light maps a tutorial on how to create HDR images is on

http://www.peterguthrie.net/blog/2009/04/hdr-skydome-tutorial/

The following is a website explaining how to use your HDRi in your CG scene.

http://en.9jcg.com/comm_pages/blog_content-art-10.htm