High resolution Milky Way HDRI or background image, willing to pay

Support Materials and Textures
1

I found:

It’s too low resolution for my purposes. Apparently the original version is a much higher resolution but I searched everywhere on the internet and could not find the original resolution. I also emailed ESO and got no response.

I tried loading it into GIMP and scaling it up and using Sharpen and other effects plugins to make it look better. I haven’t gotten it good enough but I’ll keep playing around with it and see if I can get a good looking upscale.

Does anyone know of a higher resolution? I am willing to pay for it.

Thanks!

2

milkyway
milkyway4242×2121 4.07 MB

Seems site is downscaling a little… Here: https://i.imgur.com/zIMhamh.jpg

Should be 6000x3000 - Don’t know where it came from originally, but I had it on my PC. Might have actually been from NASA
:slight_smile:

3

thanks but that is the same resolution as the one i have. the one i found and the one you linked is 18 million pixels. according to the ESO site the original is 800 million.

4

What is your use for the image? A 6000x3000 hdr should more than suffice. Blender might not even be able to handle in image the scale you’re talking…

5

test
test1920×1080 746 KB

6000x3000 isnt that big once you wrap it around an object and only render a small portion. it looks okay scaled down but if you full screen it on a 1920x1080 monitor it’s pretty bad.

6

So how big do you want it?

7

by milky way what do you mean ?

I see the image with a lot of white cloud

i did work on a script to show only the stars around
with a maximum around 10 000 stars but Blender is getting sluggish
and it does not look whitish like your pic !
all the stars are distributed around a sphere in blender.

would that be good enough ?

happy bl

8

Try here…Deep Space Star Mapping

In celestial coordinates 16000x8000

Last time I used it it was way too bright in Filmic, had to drop down the Strength in world setting.

3 Likes
9

It’s not just about resolution and pixel count… most JPGs have 8-bit depth, where HDRIs usually have 32-bit depth. In other words, you can get significantly more information into one pixel with a true HDRI than a compressed JPG. You can see the difference by lowering brightness. True HDRI whites coming from a light source stay bright as everything gets dark. Compressed whites dim at the same rate as other pixels.

1 Like
10

It’s also important to recognize how real cameras work too. You literally don’t even need an HDRI background in this case. In order to have the planet exposed properly and visible, the background stars will not be visible. You can see this in real pictures of the earth. (1) (2) (3) (4)

1 Like
11

It isn’t remotely as good as a proper HDR file, but perhaps you could try this node setup using the low dynamic range file in your World background.

starmap_pseudoHDR_nodes
starmap_pseudoHDR_nodes1684×540 112 KB

1 Like
12

Thanks! I didnt find that one in my search, will definitely help!

1 Like
13

I was wondering about that. I will have other shots where there wont be other objects in view. Any way to simulate this effect in blender with camera settings or something?

14

If you adjust the exposure level, you could simulate this effect.

15

3ds max had a great auto exposure feature for this that I loved. I haven’t found a way besides manually adjusting it in blender.

Last time I was looking into it I found this addon “Real Camera 3” that can adjust exposure automatically and should work, but I have not tried it personally.

Photographer - Camera Exposure, White balance and Autofocus might be worth looking into also, they don’t specifically say it has auto-exposure, but its got more real camera options and could make the manual process easier/more realistic.

16

That’s actually a pretty good add-on. I’ve found it pretty useful- you could find more advanced features, but I doubt you can find them for free. And that add-on is free. I’d recommend it.