I am new to blender, and the forum - and thus apologize for any mistakes in the process in asking this!
My current project is the interior of an apartment, and everything is going fine accept the exterior view from the windows.
i have tried to use different HDR skies, and that is obviously very good for the window light, shadows etc, but I would like to customize the view.
How is this usually done for archviz? Lets say I am creating a prospective appartement and want to match the view from a high floor window to a drone photo from the actual intended location? Backplates, 360 environment image ?
Backplates tend to have massive resolutions, but I’m guessing (I don’t use them) they would be hard to work with and yield satisfactory results panning and zooming the area you want to show, while maintaining about the same perspective your scene camera has.
With 360 panoramas, perspective is not an issue, however resolution is. Sometimes they give you 8bit bigger res panoramas as well as hdris with lower res.
If massive textures cause memory issues, you could render out what you see at the resolution you want.
Obviously you should be using the lightpath trick to separate out what the camera sees (backplate, rotated to best view hdri etc) and what the rest sees (hdri).
I never have good images from actual locations, I use something that resembles the location.
It depends on your scene but the current trend is to make the outside also in 3D. If you have a single family house with large windows it is almost impossible to fake the outside view with backplates (unless you match the backplate for each individual shot). It is usually OK to use backplates for distant objects but the objects near the windows shoud be modelled. It also depends how big are the windows. If you have only small windows you need to expose the image more and the exterior is than overexposed and you don’t have to model it too carefully.
It really depends on what is seen outside. We tend to use a lot of backplates for photographed and rendered images, which are composed in an image editor of your choice. Rendering them right into the image is just an unnecessary hassle.
It’s only when specific objects need to be show right behind the window that you will want to model and place them there but tuning colors and perspective of floors/grass, further objects and faking reflections from backplates gets very efficient and flexible once you get used to it.