If you do another render, you will see that the lighting on your model very closely matches the lighting of your background environment. You may find that your model appears to be unnaturally placed, such as having a car sitting in a treetop. You will need to rotate, pan, and tilt your camera around your model to get a good match between your background map and your model. The easiest way to do this is to go to the Views menu and select Viewport Background.

Using the settings above, the background of your perspective viewport will show the ldr environment map. In this way, you will be able to see your models relationship to the background in real time, and adjust camera position accordingly.

One issue with hdri lighting is that when using a background scene taken in full sun, the hdr lighting appears to be too dim. This is caused by the fact that the sun is up to seventeen stops brighter than the rest of the sky. It is extremely difficult to capture an hdri with such a broad range of light. Another issue is that hdr images do not cast hard shadows. Fortunately, there is a simple solution to both of these issues, if you don't mind cheating a little. The use of a direct light with a low multiplier and hard VRay shadows, positioned to match the sun in the hdr image, will solve both issues with little effect on the realism of the output. The hdr will still provide most of the direct light and all of the reflected color from the image, and the direct light will provide the hard shadows and the extra direct light for added realism. In addition, you can use the Multiplier in the VRayHDRI maps rollout to increase the level of light added by your hdr map to the scene. I hope this is helpful. If you have any usage tips that you think would add value to this tutorial, please email them to info@hdrmill.com.

If you would like to add this tutorial to your website, please give us proper credit and a link to www.hdrmill.com. Thank you.

The Staff at HDR Mill.