[Tutorial] HDRI From SpaceEngine to DAZ
Ryselle-Ryssa
Posts: 147
Hi!
I hope this is in the right forum I would have shared my HDRI-Maps, but I don't know where to put a 512mb file 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
- 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)
- Photoshop
- 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
Nice, but almost $100 dollars to get game and pro package on steam.
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
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
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.
@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
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
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.
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
Thanks for that as well. I'll check it first.
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):
Here are my first results using the SpaceEngine Pro version and Pano2VR to create an HDRI.