Use HDRI for reflections, Daylight for shadows?

[professorhaddock]

Hey everybody,

I've done quite a bit of searching and I wasn't able to find a really clear answer. Is it possible to have both an HDRI image for reflections and a Daylight object for shadows in the Cinema 4D plugin?

And another thing: I'm curious, can I open a project I've been working on in the demo version of Octane in a fully licensed version?

Thanks.

[bepeg4d]

Hi,
Octane is not like other render where you can define different HDRI for reflections, illumination and so on. But you can have the physical sky in conjunction with an HDR.
In C4d just add an HDRI Environment object and an Octane daylight and enable the "Mix Sky Texture" option in the attribute of the Daylight tag:

About the possibility to continue a scene prepared with the demo with the final version, the answer is yes
ciao beppe

[professorhaddock]

Well that's good to know, thanks.

I don't see the Mix option you have circled; demo versions are older than the release, correct? Or maybe I have something set incorrectly?

[bepeg4d]

Hi,
I guess that you don't have already the latest demo version:
https://home.otoy.com/render/octane-render/demo/
The latest version is 2.23.2 R6.2 and has the mix environment option
ciao beppe

[professorhaddock]

That's cool, but now I can't get the demo to install on R15.

[professorhaddock]

I got it, it turns out I needed to get both the standalone Octane Client and a Cuda upgrade.

[bepeg4d]

great, I am glad to hear that you have solved
ciao beppe

[professorhaddock]

Are we going to be able to use lights as shadow casters in Octane 3? I get beautiful reflections and GI with an HDRI, and it'd be nice to maintain that and get shadows at the same time. "Mix Sky Texture" isn't doing this for me.. the results look really harsh.

[Daniel_Ward]

I'm not entirely sure of the effect you're after in you final renders, but I downloaded the free sample HDRi sky from Hyperfocal Design and it seems to do a good job of giving the general ambiance your expect from using an HDRi back ground and giving well defined shadows.

http://www.hyperfocaldesign.com/free-hdri-sky/

I'm not sure of the technical reasons, but they seem to suggest their HDRi back grounds are made with a much higher dynamic lighting range than most HDRi images contain, so you can render an image that seems to have the best of both HDRi and Daylight lighting.

[bepeg4d]

Hi,
please, could you provide some screenshots?
Octane is pretty efficient with HDRI illumination, maybe the HDR has not too much dynamics, but can be corrected in PS
ciao beppe