High Dynamic Range Imaging
with
Terragen and/or POV-Ray
The purposes of this webpage and associated software are:
- To allow the photorealistic terrain rendering software Terragen to be more easily used as a source of HDR environments.
- Allow cubic HDRI environments from any source to be used with HDR Shop and LightGen.
- Provide a reasonably fast and accurate global illumination solution to POV-Ray users that makes use of HDR data but doesn't require a non-standard version of POV-Ray.
Terragen scene converted to a high dynamic range (HDR) cubic environment suitable for use with image-based lighting.
Software:Links:
- SOPack Plugin for Terragen that exports HDR data either in Radiance's HDR format or in floating-point TIFF format.
- HighDynamic Jo Meder's plugin for the Mac version of Terragen that also enables HDRI image output.
- HDR2TIFF Convert Radiance's HDR format to floating-point TIFF format, accepted by a (slightly) larger number of programs.
- LG2POV Convert LightGen text files to a POV script that normalizes and approximates LightGen's lighting solution.
- Cube2Cross Convert a 6-pane cubic HDR environment to a "cross"-format environment accepted by some panoramic conversion tools. Updated 02-Aug-2006 to support RLE-compressed HDR images.
- HDR2EXR Convert HDR images/environments to the ILM OpenEXR format required by some tools.
A Tutorial by Helen Triantafillou Explains the process of going from a 6-pane cubic Terragen environment to a spherical (or other) panoramic HDR map. Basically, how to get a Terragen scene into a pano format that HDR Shop--or any other HDR-capable renderer--can understand. The method explained here can be generalized to any cubic HDR environment and any renderer that accepts HDR environments or textures.
- HDRI Textures A German site showing a lot of the work that's been done in HDRI already. Methods, map types, sample images, and a short list of HDR-enabled software.
- HDR Probe Tutorial by Marko Dabrovic: Rendering in Lightwave with Terragen-generated HDR light probes.
- Imagenieria - Panorámicas HDRI con Terragen New! Spanish tutorial on building web-based HDRI panoramas with Terragen. Makes use of PTViewer, a Java-based HDRI JPG viewer similar to QuickTime VR, along with SOPack and HDR Shop.
- HDR Environment Tutorial (German) Step-by-step tutorial on creating panoramic HDR environments from Terragen scenes.
- A German article discussing the basics behind HDRI imaging, why it's used, some sample images, and useful links. (English translation.)
- HDRI Image Collection Hosted at this site, a collection of images I've acquired and links to standard HDRI benchmark images.
- Anyone with additional useful links or HDRI renders testing any of these packages is encouraged to e-mail me.
Return to the Index
The contents of this webpage and all files contained herein, unless otherwise noted, are copyright ©2003-2004, Sean O'Malley.
