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[Tutorial] HDRI From SpaceEngine to DAZ

Ryselle-RyssaRyselle-Ryssa Posts: 146
edited July 2020 in Freebies

Hi!

I hope this is in the right forum angel I would have shared my HDRI-Maps, but I don't know where to put a 512mb file frown I'm open for suggestions.

Since I havent found it on the web, I thought I might share the workflow, in case someone has the same problem :-)

How to get a HDR-Map for DAZ Studio from SpaceEngine PRO (https://store.steampowered.com/app/1026970/SpaceEngine_PRO/)?

Requirements

  1. Space Engine PRO: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1026970/SpaceEngine_PRO/ (It may work with the standard version, but I'm not sure of it)
  2. Photoshop
  3. Intel(R) Texture Works Plugin for Photoshop: https://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/intel-texture-works-plugin

 

Preparations

  • Go to C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\SpaceEngine\config, open "main-user.cfg"
  • Set VideoMemorySize and RAMSizeMax to a fitting number, it is, for some reason, set to only 2048 by default, I used 8192 for Video Memory and 32768 for RAMSizeMax
  • Install Intel(R) Texture Works Plugin as descripted on the download-page

 

In SpaceEngine

  • Start the "game", get used to the controls
  • Adjust your grafic settings
  • Under preferences, top general (first entry), shoose dds as screenshot format
  • Find your motive, that is, the part of space you need
  • Go to display (Screen Symbol left corner in the HUD)
  • You will see four choices (perspective, fish eye, cylincrical, cube map), choose "cylindrical", this is the equiplanar projection
  • Look if the result would fit you, if not, adjust
  • Set rendering solution, spikes solution, and, if you are dealing with spacewarp, also warp, to 4096
  • Set from full screen to window mode
  • Set window size to 8196x8196 - yes, this will slow your mashine down
  • Press F11 to screenshot
  • Wait a bit, leave program via alt + F4
  • Screenshots will appear in C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\SpaceEngine\screenshots named scr000001.dds

Photoshop

  • Open Screenshot using the plugin
  • Load Transparence as Alpha-Channel
  • Set file to 32bit
  • Use whatever you need, for example HDR Toning, to adjust the results.
  • OPTIONAL: I found it useful to use different manipulations, like equilize histogram or gamma coorection and combine them in a new file
  • Save as EXR

DAZ

  • Open new file
  • Set EXR as HDR-Map in the render settings
  • Adjust Gamma correction and other parameters
  • render

 

UPDATE (2020/08/01)

  • I found out, that the screenshots, taken in either format, are only 8 bit, so neither the plugin, nor the workflow concering it is nessessary
  • Instead, one can just take a "cylindrical" screenshot at high resoultion, open it in Photoshop, and adjust it for using it in DAZ
  • Because the screenshots are only 8bit, you may get artifacts when dealing with gradients (but this is a problem I noticed also in some commercial products)
  • I workaround by taking a few normal screenshots, that I use as a backdrop, here the problem isn't as aggravated

 

Space_Example.png
1024 x 1024 - 1M
Ryselle_in_Space.png
1000 x 1000 - 1M
Post edited by Ryselle-Ryssa on

Comments

  • Silver DolphinSilver Dolphin Posts: 1,608

    Nice, but almost $100 dollars to get game and pro package on steam.

  • mindsongmindsong Posts: 1,701

    This free tutorial is appreciated. It's nice to know this workflow and tool exists for future potential project needs.

    Thanks Ryselle-Ryssa - I saved this pointer for future reference.

    cheers,

    --ms

  • Ryselle-RyssaRyselle-Ryssa Posts: 146
    Silver Dolphin said:

    Nice, but almost $100 dollars to get game and pro package on steam.

    I would happily share hdr's and backdrop out of SpaceEngine, but I haven't found a non-costly way to host such huge files frown

  • Silver DolphinSilver Dolphin Posts: 1,608

    You could post the link on sharecg as long as it is not over Sharecg has a 180mb limit on size but the file I would use free 15gb Google Drive for large files there are others but I don't use them.

  • thd777thd777 Posts: 943
    edited December 2020

    @Ryselle-Ryssa Thanks for the tutorial. It got me strated with Space Engine. Marvelous little program. I am currently using the ~$25 base version and get pretty good results. My work-flow is a bit different then yours after experimenting. I export a skybox (six cube images) from Space Engine. The base version allows 1K*1K per cube side and that gives me a 4K by 2K "HDRI" after conversion. That works ok for many applications. I use pano2vr for the conversion of the six images into one Equirectangular projection for use in Studio with Iray. The images are of course not true HDRI but still provide interesting lighting. Here are a couple of examples using a Iray background based on a location near Jupiter with the milkyway and one of Jupiter's moons in the background.

    Ciao

    TD

    Passing Jupiter 1.png
    2000 x 913 - 920K
    Passing Jupiter 3.png
    2000 x 1400 - 2M
    Post edited by thd777 on
  • WandererWanderer Posts: 957

    I have Space Engine Pro, but not going back to Adobe due to ongoing subscription costs. Does anyone have another suggestion for me to use output from Space Engine as lighting/background image in Daz?

  • thd777thd777 Posts: 943
    edited March 2021

    Wanderer said:

    I have Space Engine Pro, but not going back to Adobe due to ongoing subscription costs. Does anyone have another suggestion for me to use output from Space Engine as lighting/background image in Daz?

    Hello!

    if you have the pro version, there is no need for Photoshop. I also upgraded recently to pro and you can directly export a high resolution .hdr or .exr in 32bit as skybox. I then use pano2vr from Gardengnome software to turn the skybox into a equirectangular projection that can be directly plugged into the Iray dome and provides accurate lighting. Works nicely. 
    ciao

    TD

    Post edited by thd777 on
  • WandererWanderer Posts: 957

    Awesome, thanks! I never knew that. I'll have to look into that. Wow, that's expensive. Well, it's better than nothing, and cheaper than Adobe subscription in the long run.

  • thd777thd777 Posts: 943

    Yes, pano2vr is not cheap.  I have an older version that works great and it does a lot little things that one can use to make VR content files. If you don't mind fiddling a bit, there is a free python script available at GitHub https://github.com/sunset1995/py360convert

    i have not tried that one but based on some comments I have seen it works well. 
    ciao

    TD

  • WandererWanderer Posts: 957

    Thanks for that as well. I'll check it first.

  • Ryselle-RyssaRyselle-Ryssa Posts: 146

    Hi!

    Does anyone a solution to bypass PanoV2? This was exactly the bottleneck why I turned back to the backdrop method?

    Best wishes

    Ryselle

  • markusmaternmarkusmatern Posts: 559

    Ryselle-Ryssa said:

    Hi!

    Does anyone a solution to bypass PanoV2? This was exactly the bottleneck why I turned back to the backdrop method?

    Best wishes

    Ryselle

    There are several solutions available. The ones I have used in the past are PTGui (commercial) and Hugin (Open Source)

    For converting my panoramas I nowadays use Pano2VR.

    Searching for cubemap to equirectangular  gave me several results, none of which I have tried (and I don't know whether they work with 32Bit input images):

  • markusmaternmarkusmatern Posts: 559
    edited April 2021

    Here are my first results using the SpaceEngine Pro version and Pano2VR to create an HDRI.

    ScifiRacer_Earth003d_web.jpg
    1920 x 1080 - 258K
    Post edited by markusmatern on
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