This seems like a really obvious question, but how can I increase the brightness of an HDR image? In 3ds max, it was quite easy.
For example, most of the HDRs I have are black with a few white points that are the sources of light. When I use them to light my scene, it makes for a very dark and poorly shaded scene, with no colour being cast by the HDR. I’ve tried using the built in curves editor, and gotten the effect that I want in the preview window, but I can’t seem to find away to apply that to the global texture.
Any help would be appreciated. I have a feeling this must be a pretty common thing… I just can’t for the life of me figure out how to do it.
I have tried that, but it increases the brightness as if the image were a JPG, not an HDR. That is, the image becomes all white and washed out. Whereas if I open the HDR in an external HDR viewer and increase the brightness, it treats it like a high range image.
Also, when I set the brightness under colour in the texture settings, like you suggested, it has no effect on the brightness of the background when rendered. Does that mean it’s a render setting that I have to change, and not a texture setting?
Wierd, because it works here in the render for me, but if you want only the the light (white parts) brighter then use a higher Contrast value in the same tab. You also have some Ambient control in World buttons, World tab with Exposure and Range.
AFIK, Blender doesn’t have any actual control over the HDR part of the image (it just uses what’s there) so maybe your best solution is find a HDRI that suits your needs.
I’m personally not sure either if Blender treats HDRI’s really as HDRI’s so I usually use HDR Shop to adjust the images to my needs. It is of course not ideal but since I use the same HDRI’s all the time (yeah, that’s not that great but however…), it is an option.
The exposure control worked for me… sort of. It increases the brightness, but it doesn’t allow me to get the HDR to give any colour to the screen. I’m running Linux, so a lot of software is out of the question, but I managed to open it in gimp, increase the brightness, then save it as a copy and use it in blender. It’s a timely workaround, but it did work.
Maybe in the future there should be HDR settings in import for blender, like in 3ds max. Just a suggestion to any developers who might be reading.
Have you tried rotating your whole scene including camera until you get the brightest part of your hdr lighting your scene. I’ve found rotating helps a lot when needing to composite into photographs and get the shadows from my models casting in the right direction as the photo’s.
on the render buttons panel switch to yafray gi panel, and down to the left you see the GI Power. default is 1, tune up a bit. is this the answer for your solution?
