Smart IBL and Irradiance Particle

My irradiance particle "study-mode" is back in action! 

I have encountered a very cool site that provides high resolution hdr stuff long before I have gotten myself hooked on this Irradiance Particle thing and the whole image-based lighting gig. It's www.hdrlabs.com. It's where I get my hdri's but I never bothered with the Smart IBL GUI. 

To make the long story short, I got bumped in the head and  this idea of using Smart IBL's user interface to setup my scene just came to me. I import only the background and reflection because I want to control the lighting using irradiance particle as my lighting solution. It's fast and easy scene set up. Plus your hdri's get sorted. More info can be seen at their site. Great free stuff. I totally recommend it.

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Irradiance Particle (update 3)

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Work has suddenly picked up again and this is the only update I have to offer for this particular scene since my last post. And one "extra-income" (some sketchup modeling stint) which I could never pass up also came along the past weeks. That's the reason why this got bogged down a little. It feels like forever to finish. I really hope to finish this like it should be. 

Here I added some grass using the grass-o-matic and plugin some trees using Onyx trees.

irradiance particles and hdri. update 2

I have gone to a totally different direction with my exterior archiviz test.
From my regular lighting solution of using Daylight with mental ray sun and mr physical sky, I have taken a new path - Image Base Lighting using HDRI's through Irradiance Particles.

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A few more adjustments. Somehow, I would have to invest in some decent HDRI's. That would come if only I could land in a decent job that would pay me and this hobby. :)

irradiance particles and hdri

I feel like a kid on his first bike ride without the rear training wheels. Let me tell you why. While trying to figure out how to make my exterior archiviz render with mental ray better, I have stumbled upon Jeff Patton's entry on making interior renders "unique". Here he recommends IBL with Irradiance Particles. I'm hooked!

After 4 hours of tweaking with it here is what I have.

I'm still figuring out if I got it working right. The shadows seem soft compared to the HDRI environment which is bright daylight.

 Here are the settings. You can find free HDRI's at www.hdrlabs.com and some at www.hyperfocaldesign.com.

I will surely be updating this.