HDRI Dome Projection in Blender Using Shader Nodes Only

When searching for HDRI dome projection on YouTube, you’ll find many tutorials suggesting you create a mesh dome with an HDRI emission texture applied. The problem with this approach is that it doesn’t produce proper lighting. The result often looks like you’re using an 8-bit JPEG instead of a true 32-bit HDRI, which—when captured in […]

Denoising animation renders for free

Why You Should Avoid Inbuilt Denoisers for Animation Renders Most modern 3D software like Blender, 3ds Max, or Maya offer built-in denoisers (such as OptiX or Intel’s OIDN) that work great for still images. They can quickly clean up noisy renders and make previews look much nicer with fewer samples. However, when it comes to […]

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 […]

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 […]

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. […]

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 […]

How to Color Balance your HDRI?

For hdri map colour correction, I highly recommend you to use Photoshop. Please download and open FREE_HDR_103 hdr map from here and open it in Photoshop. For this tutorial, I am using Photoshop CS6 as it is the latest version available without subscription-based rental. 1. Open HDRI Map in Photoshop 2. Enable 32-bit Exposure preview […]

Blender 2.81 and new Intel denoiser

Quick instruction on how to use new Intel Open Image Denoise function in Blender 2.81 Blender 2.81 is not yet here, but you can download the latest build from Blender Experimental Builds and use it. It is not recommended for production work. I am using Blender 2.81 daily because it has improved Outliner and new Intel’s denoising […]

Blender HDRI setup

Last version of Blender 2.79 comes with Shadow Catcher feature. Let’s check how it works along with HDRI lighting and backplate image used for background.  You can download complete tutorial project file from here Preparing test scene 1. Remove default scene and create UV sphere. Go to tab Tools and choose Smooth. Press N key and zero […]