The ULTIMATE GUIDE to HDRI Lighting in Blender!

In this video, learn how to use HDRI Lighting to create realistic lighting in your Blender Renderings!

WANT TO LEARN TO USE BLENDER? CHECK OUT THE COURSE!

POLYHAVE HDRI IMAGES

Want to Support The CG Essentials?

Add-On Links (Affiliate Links)

Disclaimers: all opinions are my own, sponsors are acknowledged. Product Links in the description are typically affiliate links that let you help support the channel at no extra cost.

TIMESTAMPS
0:00 - Intro
0:11 - What is an HDRI?
1:11 - Where to find HDRIs
4:29 - How to add an HDRI environment in Blender
8:22 - Setting up the HDRI to rotate, scale, etc
11:05 - Lighting a scene with an HDRI and a color background
13:21 - Creating an HDRI Dome lighting setup
17:00 - Creating shadows with the dome setup
20:16 - Adjusting shadow darkness

[TheCGEssentials]

Hi everyone! Let me know if you have questions about HDRI lighting in the comments below! :)

[Albinus]

I've just been adding planes and setting them as shadow catchers But having the dome setup will give a lot more control. Great video!

[markam]

Great info have used hdri before for lighting but didnt have the shadows info.

[WalidDingsdale]

amazing tutorial, thanks for sharing this

[stanfilipbrian]

Can you make a more in depth video about animation in geo scatter? Going through each option?

[binualex]

Hi, It's looks different in Blender World Mixer?

[blimeydude]

Why is suddenly everyone posting HDRI tuts

[adabuilder]

Whenever I get to mapping the object, adjusting the z for location does nothing. Nothing changes. Is this because I'm using Blender 3.6?

[paulwebb]

cool. Thanks for this. I bought a blender addon HDRImaker (purchased it a couple of years ago so think price is up a bit now) but it works really well. very quick. But cool to see how i can do it myself. great video as always 👍

[AFOKHAOS]

Hi Justin, I've just been getting into animation and now modelling in Blender and your tutorials have been a life saver. Paired with great presentation of the tool in question and your upbeat, easy going nature; it makes these videos incredibly easy to follow along with.

I was just wondering if the NLA editor is something you might consider covering in future? I've had some trouble understanding it after making my animations (currently video game viewmodel/first person animations) and just cant quite get the hang of it. Some other tutorials I've found on it still haven't managed to help too much unfortunately! Im pretty sure it has the ability to merge animations of multiple objects into one single track but I just cannot work it out!

Thank you for all your amazing videos regardless though!

[BenleGentil]

There's something that I don't understand (and I'm asking because I've seen it done like you in another video) - Once you create the sphere, it blocks the world shader; so whatever you have there (image / color intensity) has no effect on the objects inside your sphere, right? Or is it something with the object shader that I'm missing

[aloewishus]

whenever I'm feeling good about life I watch an intro to one of your videos. Just to keep things balanced

[Dossell]

Watched another tutorial before this and it was TORTURE thank you for making this straightforward!

[jeanpepin]

Excuse me, is there a tool to convert 360° camera images or sequences in HDRI? ;)

[rajendrameena]

19:00, I think someone covered this issue of shadow better.

[eitantal]

How do you know all this? is it from a manual somewhere? the devs themselves? researchers?