I’ve written blogs and articles before on the subject of how important great quality 360 HDRI’s are, but I felt it important to take a deeper dive into why tonal range dynamics and pixel quality are in the spotlight more than ever. Let’s start with the traditional industry use of 360° HDRI’s in the 3D rendering world. Fundamentally the purpose of the HDRI hasn’t changed in quite a long time, and in more cases than not, it’s easy to get away with a low res 360 dome (or 360 Map) for basic CAD lighting and rendering.
However when it comes to reflections, and real-world photorealism, a well shot, well planned (and importantly) well positioned 360° HDRI can make or break a 3D render. Here at Domeble we continually push the R&D limits of 360° HDRI capture and processing techniques to extract an even more dynamic range, and, it goes without saying our attention to detail always drives us to create pixel resolutions that are arguably at the next level of quality. So why do we do this? The simple answer is that apart from wanting to provide amazing content to our users and clients, there is a whole new world of opportunities that utilise and require incredible 360° imagery.
The industry is full of excitement around metaverse’s, virtual productions and the rise and rise of virtual reality. A rise so rapid, and fast-tracked because of the pandemic, that there is almost a virtual Klondike effect with millions of people in a VR gold rush. The immersive possibilities and use scenarios with 360° HDRi’s is genuinely exciting, and we are finding that more and more of our content is in demand to fulfil the appetite for immersive scenes and automotive design reviews than ever before. So it is even more important that 360° content is of the highest possible resolution, as there is nowhere to hide inside a VR headset that has near retina quality vision.
Our HDRI’s here at Domeble range from 30,000 pixels to 50,000 pixels wide, with dynamic ranges of up to 30 EV, and shoot at this quality level because we know the appetite for 360° image quality. Is it too much might ask? Well, we certainly don’t think so, and I can assure you in the very near future as headsets and fidelity improve, that hi-resolution content will be very much the norm. In a previous paragraph, I mentioned virtual productions. This is another incredibly fast-moving process that wasn’t really considered as feasible before the pandemic, and now every single movie stage and studio around the world has built or is building huge LED Volumes.
They all need content, and they all need quality content, from groundbreaking game engine scenes through to 360° imagery and even high-resolution 2D backplates. Yet again it comes back to quality, fidelity, dynamics and resolution, so no matter what anyone thoughts on 360 content is, I’d bet my house on it being around for a very long time to come. Here at Domeble, we’re always hunting that perfect 360° HDRI dome, and I’m sure this will always be the case. We stand proud of our content and if you’d like to test our images, please check out our sample packs here and you’ll get access to test our free HDRI and backplates.
Written by Carl Lyttle – Founder @ Domeble