Poly Haven
patreon
Backplates are up! + New release schedule
🕑 Added 2018-02-16 14:38:36 +0000 UTC All the backplates are now finally published!You can tell which HDRIs have backplates by the little icon that appears when you hover over the thumbnail:
You can also just search for "backplates", which will then only show HDRIs that have some.
The backplates will appear below the HDRI download buttons:
After clicking one of the backplate thumbnails, you can choose which format to download:
- Pretty JPG - looks the same as the preview, but much higher resolution. Good if you don't feel like doing any compositing/photoshopping on your render yourself, but will be harder to match the lighting.
- Plain JPG - no enhancements, just basic lens corrections. Good neutral image for compositing and color correction with your render.
- RAW - the actual high-bit-depth raw files straight from the camera, higher quality and dynamic range than the JPGs. Good if you're serious about matching your 3d objects to the backplates as accurately as possible. Requires some raw processing software like Photoshop, Lightroom, RawTherapee (free) or Darktable (free).
All formats include the camera and lens metadata, and (except for the raws) have been white-balanced to match the HDRI.
Resolutions are typically around 7k (36 MP) depending on whether they've been cropped for horizon leveling, though some of the older ones are 5k.
New Release Schedule
Having spent the last three and a half weeks processing these backplates, I've remembered just how much time they take to sort out.
It takes almost as long to process a set of backplates as it does to stitch the HDRI itself, meaning if I continue to shoot backplates for many of my HDRIs, my workload is basically doubled.
Because of this, I'm going to have to change the frequency of HDRI releases.
Currently (since reaching the goal at $700 last year), I publish two HDRIs every single week. This was doable when there were no backplates to process, but now it's simply not possible to do both HDRIs, both sets of backplates, and still have time for freelance work to pay the rest of my bills.
So from now on, if there are backplates for an HDRI, I'll only be publishing one HDRI each week (along with its backplates at the same time). If there are no backplates, I'll continue to do two per week as usual.
Don't be discouraged by this, I'm still doing the same amount of work for HDRI Haven :) If anything, this is just helping me favour quality over quantity!
Perhaps one day I might afford to work on HDRIs full-time, or have a budget to hire someone to help me out with this sort of manual labour.
In the meantime, the HDRI library continues to grow (albeit slightly slower), now at 125 HDRIs in total!
Thanks again for everyone's support, I couldn't do it without you :)
Comments
Poly Haven
Yep! Just added a "_BACKPLATES.txt" file to the normal Offline Access folder with instructions to get the backplates in bulk.
Barbara Beil
Nice. Will you put the backplates into the Google Drive folder so that backers with the offline access can download them automatically?
