Hair Farm Forums

Some more sIBL matching tests. I will post my workflow later today, I use a plug-in called Lightbitch for Lightwave that can read in .HDR images and generate a bunch of lights that mimic the image with colour and intensity. You can then export these lights into Max using .FBX

Lightbitch plug-in for Lightwave written by Christian Bloch, I also used HDRLabs sIBL Gui 3.0 loader (by Kel Solaar) more can be found here - http://www.hdrlabs.com

Using this technique is useful for matching sIBL or HDRI lit scenes or real world scenarios. I use upto about 16 lights using low res shadow maps and one main light source (if there needs to be one) that is set higher.

You could of course set the lights by hand and get away with less lights.
Some example tests, compositing the multiple lights scan line renders with MR renders.
(this sIBL is great but doesnt work with character placement all that well.)

Here's a breakdown shot, you can see you almost get a kind of GI type bounce effect from the lights, the shadows are quite usable to
Max screengrab of another lighting setup:
I'm NOT saying any of this works or even looks great, it's just some thoughts to hopefuly spark off more ideas with other users of Hair-Farm