How to use HDRI in Blender (Best way)

Unleash the Power of HDR Lighting in blender and make your Lego models look hyper realistic hi there I'm Badger bricks and today I will show you how to use HDR I in blender to transform your Lego renders from plain to looking like they were shoot with a professional camera there are two ways to light your Lego photos using artificial lights like lamps or using natural lighting to achieve natural Lighting in blender hdris are the easiest and most effective method hdri or high dynamic range Imaging is a bunch of photos at different brightness levels merg into one super detailed picture this picture can be wrapped around your 3D models in blender to make it look like it's sitting in a real environment with natural lighting and Reflections to find hdris you can visit various sites like HDR heaven and download it from there alternatively you can use an asset addon like blender kit which lets you download hdris directly within blender and applies them automatically if you choose to use external sites you will need to apply the hdri yourself here is how to do it first go to the Shader tab in the Shader editor open the context menu at the bottom left and choose the world instead of object then check the box on the right to enable using nodes the two notes should appear on your screen the background note which changes the color of the ambient light and its intensity using the strength slider and the world output node which projects everything you connect to it as the background to add the hdri press shift a to add a new Noe and select environment texture from the list in the image field of the environment texture Noe choose the hdri file and connect this note to the color input of the background Noe and that's it it's really that easy if you don't see the hdri applied yet set the viewport shading to material preview in the top right corner and enable scene lighting and Background by clicking the arrow next to the shading options to adjust the rotation and position of the HDR you need to have the node Wrangler addon enabled once enabled click on the environment texture note and press contrl T this action will add two new nodes the texture coordinate node which you don't need to change anything in just yet and the mapping node where you can adjust the rotation and other properties of the hdri you can enable and disable the background by going to the render properties Tab and selecting the film section there you can check the transparent option this will make the HDR background invisible while still using the lighting and Reflections leave the background on when you want to use it as a sky for indoor scenes or when you don't want the hdri to be visible you can make the background transparent or block its visibility using objects hdri can produce really nice results providing realistic lighting and Reflections however they don't give you full control over how the lights interact with the model Beyond adjusting the strength and rotation to gain more control over the lighting while maintaining the reflections and mood provided by the hdri you can use additional lights or large wide reflective planes this allows you to enhance the specific areas and create the exact lighting conditions you need hdris are usually used as a ambient Lighting in scenes where you want to replicate the real life environments they are often supplemented with traditional lights to enhance the overall lighting by combining hdris with additional light sources you can achieve the perfect balance of realistic ambient light and controlled focused Lighting in your 3D scenes you can set up your scene so the background scene in your render is different from the hdri that provides the lighting this is especially useful for creating scenes like being above the clouds where the hdri lighting might be dark but this sky looks great you can substitute the dark HDR lighting with a normal a lighting hdri to make the mood look better while keeping the sky in space I'm not going to show you how to do this step by step but there is the exact note setup you need to recreate to achieve this look you will need to play with the mix Shader Noe to ensure the right hdri is visible sometimes you want your model to be seamlessly integrated into the environment of an hdri to do that you can project the hdri image onto a 3D object like a cube or sphere making the hdri part of the scene this can be useful for creating a room or other background elements in your scene without having to model them yourself again I'm not going to show you how to do this step by step because there is a really good tutorial about it on YouTube and you can find link to it in the description of this video it's a specific usage scenario so it makes no sense to waste your time on it if you don't need it right now however here is the exact note setup you need to recreate remember to change the texture coordinate from generated to object because without it it won't work so it would be everything for now and if you want to learn more about lighting in blender you can click on the video on the screen right now now [Music]

Channel: BadgerBricks

Views: 5,466

Keywords: blender animation, blender hdri addon, blender hdri tutorial, blender lego tutorial, blender rotate hdri, blender tips, capture hdri, custom hdri, hdri lighting, hdri techniques, lego, lego animation, lego blender animation, lego project, lego rendering, lego studio 2.0, lighting mastery, lighting tricks, photorealistic renders, projektowanie lego, render enhancements, render in stud.io, render lego options, rendering, stud.io, use hdri in blender

Id: Im9Q-_hjv48

Length: 5min 5sec (305 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 03 2024