From the course: 3ds Max 2026 Essential Training

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Illumination with an HDRI environment

Illumination with an HDRI environment - 3ds Max Tutorial

From the course: 3ds Max 2026 Essential Training

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Illumination with an HDRI environment

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- [Tutor] The next level up in environment lighting is a panorama of a High Dynamic Range Image, or HDRI. This is also known as image-based lighting, or IBL. We can apply an image to our environment and that will provide a background, and also illuminate the scene, but it does need to be a High Dynamic Range Image in order to work well. That means that the pixel values represent physical intensities of light. If you just drop an ordinary image into the environment slot, you're not going to get good results, it needs to be a special HDR image in order to properly illuminate the scene. Let's add one. In the Rendering menu, choose Environment, in the Common Parameters rollout, click the big button, labeled None under Environment Map, and we get the Material Map browser, navigate to Maps, OSL, Environment, and choose HDRI Environment, click OK, and unfortunately, we're taken to a folder in the 3ds Max Program Files directory. We need to navigate to our current project, and that's going to…

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