MEC4D DRI Gardens Vol. 2 Megapack contains NO GARDENS!
Yes, Im a newbie. I thought I was purchasing a set of beautiful garden scenes with camera,light, and render settings included. However, I can't find any garden scenes. Are they displayed only as examples of what is possible? I'm lost. Thanks much for your help.
Victorio
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Comments
They are HDRI images primarily for use as light sources when using the Iray renderer. To make them visible you need to go to Render Settings and turn the Draw Dome to ON. That will not only provide the light, but also serve as a backdrop.
https://www.daz3d.com/mec4d-hdri-gardens-vol-2-megapack
If you look at the 360 deg images at the bottom, you can see the extent of the HDRI. As mjc1016 says, they will provide lighting and be used as a backdrop by enabling Draw Dome in the Environment panel of the Render tab. The example images on the product page show how figures, etc. will work when using the hdri as a background.
If you find this product is not something you can use, you have 30 days from purchase to return.
Thank you very much for answering my request for help. However, I have two more questions. Frist, when I checked my Render Settings, I found that my Draw Dome was already turned on. So although my background scene was totally blank, I decided to add a foreground figure and try rendering it anyway. Once rendering started, the seemingly non-existing background began to appear. Hurray! The problem, of course, is how do you compose a scene when you can't see the background until after it is rendered?
Second question. In the final rendered image, the overhead dome itself appears across the top of the screen. How to I set the controls so this does not happen?
Finally, thank you for letting me know I can return the product, but I don't want to do that. I really want to know how to use HDRI. Discovering DAZ's capabilities has been frustrating at times, but I do enjoy using it and want to learn all I can. It's a wonderful program and I accept the challenge, especially with the great support you more experienced folks provide.
--- Victorio
You can use the Iray preview mode to see the HDRI while you are composing your image. You need a good NVIDIA graphics card to use that effectively, though.
Barbult--
Thanks for the tip. I was afraid that might be my only option. Looks like Santa might be bringing me a new graphics card for Christmas.
--- Victorio
I don't know. I use CPU only and I have no problem using the nVidia preview mode. It works on my system and updates fairly fast. Unless there is some nVidia only aspect that I don't have which I havne't missed, those of us using CPU only can use the nVidia preview mode quite well.
There's certain settings you can adjust to make the preview mode zippier, which perhaps you've turned on? I know that pre-GPU-upgrade, using preview mode was agonizing. Teeny tiny aux viewport, nothing else visible in the scene, so I could adjust precisely.
Generally, for most systems without a video card, it tends to drag it down too much to be useful...I speak from experience. My system slows to a crawl with it enabled.
Hmm, maybe my system's setup is better for Iray than I thought then. No nVidia card, but I do have a fairly good graphics card and more than enough ram to do most of the things I want. With the exception of sometimes having kind of slow renders, I don't really notice nor am I really bothered that I don't have an nVidia card. Of course, it's still on my wishlist to get, but I don't see that happening in the near future. My system isn't top of the line and I built it myself so I tend to consider it more average than high speed. I guess maybe it isn't that average.
Thanks to everyone for your suggestions. I kept playing with the various dials until I got things to work reasonably well. I owe it all to your much appreciated advice.
--- Victorio