HDR Image-Based Lighting in Blender

Watch this crash course and master the complete HDR image-based lighting workflow, 100% Blender

(426 ratings)

20,825 students

Created by Aidy Burrows, Gleb Alexandrov

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How to crush the image-based lighting workflow in Blender.

The real benefits of using High Dynamic Range images for illuminating your 3D scenes.

How to capture the full 360° high dynamic range panorama inside Blender

Knowing the light qualities and how to analyze them to create eye-popping 3D art

Requirements

Blender 2.78 or above.
A basic level understanding of Blender.

Description

In this course Gleb Alexandrov from Creative Shrimp shows how Image-based lighting is an opportunity to achieve astounding realism.

If you've just started tinkering with HDR image-based lighting in Blender,
it may seem daunting. So hard to control the direction of light (Gimme
the rim light, you, Blender!). Even harder to avoid a blown-out
background.

On top of that, there seems to be so many things to wrap your head around: High Dynamic Range, 32-bit textures, Tone Mapping...

But actually, this workflow is MUCH easier than you might have thought. I promise.

After watching this step-by-step guide, you'll get the super powers to crush the image-based lighting in Blender.

All the project files are included, so you can follow along with video tutorials

Moreover, Greg Zaal has kindly offered us a couple of amazing 2k HDRI environments from the HDRI Haven website.

Who this course is for:

Anyone wanting to master Image-based lighting in Blender and achieve astounding realism
Anyone seeking to understand High Dynamic Range, 32-bit textures, Tone Mapping etc.

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3 sections • 9 lectures • 1h 45m total length

Introduction & Resources

1 lecture • 4min

Introductory Video & Resources

HDR IMAGE-BASED LIGHTING

6 lectures • 1hr 20min

Image-Based Lighting Basics

Benefits of HDR

Filmic Color Management

Image-based Lighting Workflow in Blender

Creating Different Moods With Lighting

Render 360' Environment as HDRI

BONUS

2 lectures • 21min

Light Qualities

The Fresnel Effect

Featured review

Richard Rayer

24 courses

22 reviews

a year ago

I enjoyed the quality of the explanations and the directness of how it is done. There is a lot here to grasp the meaning of and it is a course you can come back to over and over again to develop the skills in lighting a scene. I have already gotten some ideas on how to use this in my projects but feel I will need to review the presentations a few more times to grasp all the detail of HDR environments.

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Aidy Burrows

Tutorial Co-Author With Gleb Alexandrov @ Creative Shrimp

4.6 Instructor Rating
501 Reviews
20,994 Students
2 Courses

Environment artist at TT Fusion working on titles such as Lord of the rings and mostly a whole load of Lego games :

Lego Marvel

Lego City

Lego Hobbit etc.

Freelanced working on music videos, teamed up with CG Masters to create Blender tutorials. The Blender foundation got in touch for me to create them to Blender Cloud and Steam I released a Blender game asset creation course. Teamed up with Gleb Alexandrov from Creative Shrimp to release a SpaceVFX course for Blender.

Now there are many things on the go, notably an urge to develop game creation skills more deeply in Unreal Engine 4, noodlings and doodlings of that ilk will emerge via vertStretch

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Gleb Alexandrov

Artist, Founder of the Creative Shrimp website

4.6 Instructor Rating
501 Reviews
20,994 Students
2 Courses

An artist well-versed in Blender, the founder of Creative Shrimp blog for aspiring 3D artists. Gleb's renders got multiple awards including Best Concept Art of the Year (2013), VFX Award (2017) and were published in numerous magazines and books. Gleb is a fan of free and open-source software and is known for his caffeine addiction.

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