Introduction

In this tutorial we are going to create an image that uses HDRI technology - the
aim of which is to teach you how to use HDRI
sources in Blender. The acronym HDRI is short for 'High Dynamic Range Image', an
d is explained in more detail here - the
practical examples themselves are well worth your browsing time.
Building The Scene
We will start this tutorial by building a simple scene consisting of four object
s - a UV sphere, a lamp, a camera,
and a floor plane. Place the objects in roughly the same positions as the diagra
m below.
Fiddle with the camera a little until you can render a sphere resembling the one
below. Our scene is now ready.
Define the shader of our sphere and adjust the world settings so that the .hdr i
mage is mapped onto the surface.

Creating the UV Sphere Shader

Select the UV sphere. Go to the editing tab and click on the set smooth button -
This will automatically smooth out our UV sphere
when it is rendered. Now click on the shading tab and press the add new materia
l button. We want to eliminate the material's
specularity, so adjust the spec slider to 0. Click on the mirror transparency b
utton and then the ray mirror button.
Set the corresponding slider to a value around 0.50.
Our material preview should show a texture reflecting a chequered floor plane. W
e have now finished creating a material for
our sphere. If we render our image, we can see it is reflecting a blue colour,
which is our current sky colour.
Loading a .hdr image Into World Settings
Deselect all objects and click on the shading tab, and then the world settings t
ab. From the bottom right of the screen
find the add new texture button and click it. We can now load our .hdr file. To
do this, click on the texture tab, and set the property in the texture type box
to Image. Navigate your way through your pc s hard drive, until you find your hdr
file and then load it up. Leave all the other settings alone.
Soft shadows
To give our scene more life-like lighting we are going to enable soft shadows. S
tart by selecting your lamp,
then click on the shading tab. Now click on the lamp button and then on the buff
er shadows button. Play with the
settings to your heart's content until they suit your own individual tastes. You
can also adjust the strength of the light
in the shader tab.
Final touches
If you are unsatisfied with the results that you receive from your renders, just
start moving the light source into
a position that you find more aesthetically pleasing. I also find that if I decr
ease the amount of diffusion on my UV sphere,
the specularity reduces accordingly as well.
Rendering
Go to the render tab. Make sure that you have YafRay enabled as the render engin
e, and that the envmap setting is enabled.
Then just hit the render button. The result should resemble the image below.
This is, of course, only a single example of the potential uses of HDRI mapping.
You could use this feature on any model
that you have created, and the technique is universally exciting, capable of mak
ing all your models substantially more life-like.
So play around a bit and watch your renders come to life!