From the course: Creating Product Shots in Maya
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Understanding image-based lighting - Maya Tutorial
From the course: Creating Product Shots in Maya
Understanding image-based lighting
Image based lighting or IBL is a technique for lighting a 3D scene using a special type of image file. This is known as a high dynamic range or HDR file. Instead of conventional 3D lights the scene is illuminated by the brightness of pixels in an environment map. The image is usually captured from a real-world location, and because of this, the 3D rendered objects can be made to look as if they're actually in that real environment. Image-based lighting requires that the environment map have a greater range of brightness values than a standard image. A high dynamic range image can capture all the possible brightness values that the human eye can see. The dynamic range of a signal is the ratio between its highest and lowest values. And for light it's also expressed as contrast ratio. The human eye has a contrast ratio of about a million to one. But a standard camera or an ordinary image file has a contrast ratio of about a thousand to one. Contrast ratio can also be expressed in terms…
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