http://www.uploadfile.info/uploads/28f10d0041.png
well, i dont think this looks to much like hdr, but what do you think? its my first attempt and i’d like to know if it looks like their is any noticeable hdr effect.
ok, first of all, how did you use the HDRI? Did you apply it as a texture onto a MESH(the one to the right)? It seems you did, and that’s not how HDRI are used.
HDRI are usually environment cubemaps that contain high-precision brightness information that can be used to lit a scene, one usually set it as the WORLD texture so that the models are lit from all side using the HDR texture as the light source, and because of this, you don’t need any extra light source for the scene (but it seems you do have a lamp, which is casting hard shadows, too)
actuall i did that method, followed the tut on the blender wiki. but its not the same hdr effect that i was going for. i want the hdr effect like in lost island source by valve. you know, from outside lookin into a window its real dark, but when inside lookin out, its blindingly bright. like eyes adjusting to the light, but i didnt have that effect. how do i get it without postpro?
I see, thanks for clarifying. since blender renders at 32bit/channel internally (ie HDR) In that case what you want to do is save the scene as a 32bit per channel EXR or HDR (regular ‘jpg/png/bmp/tga’ are 8bit per channel) high dynamic range file, thus retaining all the brightness information. and then ‘tonemap’ the image from 32bit/channel down to 8bit/channel. Note when you do that, the really bright pixels will spill over to adjacent pixels, creating a bloom, which should be what you are after.
tone mapping can be done using the blender node editor, or an external program such as photoshop, but the bottom line is that there is not way to achieve this without ‘postpro’ since blender’s internal 32bit raw -> 8bit conversion does not take into account light blooms, high brightness pixels are simply clamped to 1.
sorry about the long post, it may seems confusing, so feel free to ask if you have any questions.
okay, so do i just set the image format in the render options to hdr/exr? then how do i tone map it? thanx for any help, still exploring compo.
ok, first of all i appologize since i realized ‘tonemapping’ isn’t the right word to describe what we are trying to do here.
and just to clarify, this is what you are after, right?
i usually do it in photoshop, the exact procedure vary, but basically you have to load the hdr/exr file, duplicate the document, blur and mix it back. i’ll work out a tutorial if you need it.
here is anhdr imagefor you to play with: i made it some time ago in blender
step by step:
-load the hdr/exr file into photoshop cs2 (sorry gimp users)
-duplicate the document via image->duplicate (since phtoshop can’t handle multi-layerd 32bit/channel files)
-guassian-blur one of the images (blurring a hdri will create a more physically accurate blur than using a LDRI, because the highlights will spill over to adjacent pixels)
-copy the blurred image back to the original unblurred version: ctrl+A, ctrl+C, switch to the unblurred image, ctrl+V, right click on the image and select ‘fade’.
-tweak the fade % and the use linear dodge blending mode to get what you want.
- if the final image (which still is hdri) is too bright, use the ‘image’->exposure tool to bring down the brightness
-convert the image to LDR(low dynamic range) via the ‘image’->‘mode’ command
cool thanx. i will give it a go and post the results.
okay that tut works great. but now i got another problem. my blender hdr render looks like crap!
http://www.uploadfile.info/uploads/4251e8c2f2.png[this is the normal render](this is the normal render)
http://www.uploadfile.info/uploads/becb6fb564.png[and this is with hdr extension.](and this is with hdr extension.)
how do i get normal results?
that’s ‘normal’, the gamma value is set wrong, i get that too, just load the image in something like photoshop and set the gamma value to 2
nice scene, by the way 
thanx. yeah, i’m not new to blender, using it for a couple years now. i am just realising the true potential since 2.42 came out.
that really adds to the realism. is there any way to do this in the nodes compositor?
well, heres my render. i will add a link to a bigger one later.
Hey, thats a really nice render!
thanx. that hdr, along with the fresnel shader on the water really add to the realism.
i may start a wip thread with this project soon.
Reminds me of a fire-marble dome from Riven. (a.k.a Myst II)
What is HDRI?