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Support Us on Patreon & Help Us Create More Freebies!

At HDRMAPS, we believe in giving back to the CG community, and thanks to the incredible support from our Patreon backers, we’re able to offer more free HDRI maps! In September alone, we uploaded 10 brand new, high-quality HDRI maps for free, all made possible by your generous contributions. By subscribing to our Patreon, not […]

Fix Quixel Bridge export to 3ds Max 2024

If you are trying to export any asset using Quixel Bridge to the 3ds Max 2024, you would find it simply doesn’t work. It’s very strange as 3ds Max 2024 is considered as an industry standard. If you look into the log file you will notice: “connect ECONNREFUSED 127.0.0.1:13292”, which means that Quixel Bridge can’t […]

Hdr panoramas in Autopano Giga

Autopano Giga is an older panorama stitching software that is no longer being developed. However, it is available for free and remains the only no-cost solution for stitching HDRI maps effectively (apologies to Hugin). It serves as a free alternative to the expensive PTGui Pro for creating panoramic images. In the following tutorial, I will […]

How to Create HDRI Maps: A Step-by-Step Tutorial

In this tutorial, you will learn how to produce high-quality HDRI maps essential for 3D projects. It is necessary to have access to a powerful PC with decent Nvidia GPU and CPU, fast drives and more than 16GB of ram and of course some basic knowledge of photography. 1. Gather all equipment: a) You will […]

HMTools – Blender add-on released

Proudly presenting newly developed Blender add-on – HMTools. It will help any CG artist working in the Blender to set up hdri and get some nice ones for free from hdrmaps.com using API Installation You can get add-on from BlenderMarket for 1$ or download for completely free from https://hdrmaps.com/hmtools. Download it to your desktop and […]

How to measure hdri’s dynamic range?

If you wonder how to measure properly dynamic of hdri map, there it is a nice solution I just found. You can measure hdri’s dynamic range with Blender addon named: “Calculate FStop Range“, which can be downloaded from Github for free. Simply download it as .zip package and install it for Blender.Last update for addon […]

AutoPano Giga is Now Free

If you want to create stunning panoramas with ease, you need to try AutoPano Giga. This software was developed by Kolor, a company that specialized in image stitching and virtual tours. Unfortunately, Kolor closed its doors in 2018, but they left a generous gift for their loyal customers: a free license for AutoPano Giga. AutoPano […]

Fast downloads with Backblaze!

All paid downloads are delivered now from a fast Backblaze cloud! After a few days of intensive testing, I have moved all paid files to Backblaze cloud storage. All links are encrypted, and generated on request. All freebies are still served from dedicated server located in France, but with a help of the Cloudflare content […]

Realistic HDRI lighting for exterior ArchViz in Blender

In this tutorial, you will learn how to create realistic lighting for exterior visualizations in Blender. Let’s get started. First and foremost, get quallity hdri sky map. For this, head over to hdrmaps.com, and get some hdri sky map. Of course you can get some hdris for free, but when quallity matters, I recommend you […]

HDRI Lighting Setup in 3ds Max and V-Ray 5

1. VRay Renderer First, you need to enable V-Ray rendering engine for your project. In main, upper menu, go to the Rendering > Render Setup, or simply press F10 shortcut key. Choose V-Ray as a Renderer. If you have a decent GPU card, use V-Ray GPU. Close Render Setup window. 2. VRay Physical Camera. The […]

Convert .exr to .hdr in Gimp or Photoshop

Most of the hdri maps downloaded from my website are OpenEXR format (. exr extension), as this format provides the best quality/file size ratio. OpenEXR also supports layers and is considered as an industry standard in Game Dev and film production, as it offers more flexibility in the post production process. Keep in mind that, when using […]

OctaneRender™ Prime Free Tier for Blender

Otoy – a company behind Octane Render, provides a fully working, free version of the renderer for Blender, Unreal Engine, and Daz Studio. Free Prime edition is free for use on a single GPU. License is valid for 30 days, for private and commercial work. After 30 days you’ll need to activate it using new email. […]

Ivy Texturizer Blender add-on

Ivy Texturize add-on for Blender comes in handy when using Ivy Generator add-on, which comes bundled with Blender. You simply create an Ivy with leaves, and with one click Ivy Texturizer does the job for you, applying all needed materials and textures. It’s as simple as that. When you select leaves and click on Texturize button, all […]

Synchronize Sun light to HDRI in Blender

Activate Sun Position add-on Sun Position add-on comes bundled with Blender 2.91. To activate the add-on go to Edit>Preferences>Add-ons and search for “Sun Position”. Enable an add-on. In its preferences, you can enable additional information labels if needed. Once activated, the add-on will be visible in World Properties of Blender. Create a test scene and HDRI lighting […]

Rendering on 20K hdri map in Blender 2.9

I suggest you to start to work with lower resolution hdri map because loading high-resolution texture will slow down your workflow significantly, even if you have the latest GPU and fast computer. I always start with 8K hdri map in Cycles or even 2K map especially in the first stages of the project or while […]