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Max HDRI tutorials aren’t all that easy to find.  HDRI, for regular readers who aren’t into such things, stands for ‘High Dynamic Range Imagery’.  Big question: how do you use it.  And for me, what is the difference between that and regular imagery?

Wiki defines HDRI as

In image processing, computer graphics, and photography, high dynamic range imaging (HDRI or just HDR) is a set of techniques that allows a greater dynamic range of luminances between light and dark areas of a scene than normal digital imaging techniques. The intention of HDRI is to accurately represent the wide range of intensity levels found in real scenes ranging from direct sunlight to shadows.

Thus it has become something of a buzz word.  What it comes down to, as far as I can see, is creating as realistic imagery as possible from a multiple set of images.    Biggest problem of course is that our monitors display a much smaller gamut of colours than we get on paper. 

One thing is for sure, HDRI is to stay.

Here are some tutorials if that is what you are looking for.

http://www.hdri3d.com/

http://www.aniquito.com/new/max/screwdriver_hdri.php

http://www.3dm3.com/forum/f123/free-hdri-images-5982/

http://www.3dfaq.com/?p=105

http://www.cgarena.com/freestuff/tutorials/max/hdri-vray/index.html

http://www.cgarena.com/freestuff/tutorials/max/hdri-vray/index.html

ps - It’s nice to have the blog live once more - it took 6 weeks to transfer!

Digital painting ‘cheats’ may be frowned on by some artists.  I think they are great and will work in whatever digital domain you are working in, be it photoshop, painter X et al.

We’ll get to the small an unobtrusive link banner above in a moment…

Let’s serve up some digital painting ‘cheats’ on a platter.

1. First, don’t plagiarize.  Don’t go loading in a photo from a stock site and bash in into Painter to create a clone effect.  That’s stealing and can end you in a heap of trouble.  Don’t just use one off the web either - most people don’t know this who come to digital arts as a newbie, but ALL content on websites is copyright.  Which is why you don’t see alot here on this site.  It’s not because I am boring, or can’t be bothered, it’s simply all images are copyright and you can’t go stealing, reusing or even linking through to other sites to take their images.  Some (not all) photostock sites permit you to edit the images there, as long as you credit the owner.  Dreamstime and istockphoto for example, do not. That’s why I prefer www.sxc.hu! Free and, on the whole, you can do things to the images.
2. Right, so should you remix the one image?  No.  Because that would be reselling in whatever way you wanted to describe it.  However, you can mix up a few images, and use them as a basis of your painting.  
3. For example use a few images from different buildings, montage them as a street scene, make sure that they are desaturated (keep on their own layers so that you can change the saturation as you go through) then when they are right merge them down and run over the image with something like the photoshop smudge brush set on an oil.
4. Use filters.  Don’t worry about it.  the more you know about filters the better.  Use them.  just don’t overuse them. See Plugins are an excuse for real art article.
5. If you don’t know how something looks don’t guess.  Get it out of your morgue file (that is, not your old paintings this time!  It’s the images you have put at one side as reference.  You have got a morgue file haven’t you?)
6. Keep morgue files digital.  You can trace over the top if you need to.
7. Yeah, trace!  Get real.  Time is money.  If  you haven’t read it yet, you’d better read this post.
8. Find every technique you can in your down time, and try it out.  Find the fastest moves and repeat them until you don’t have to think about them.
9. Use 3d software. (That’s where the link at the top of the post comes from.)  Ok, so it doesn’t look as sweet or clever doing a bit of 3d but us pros do use it.  I don’t use it as much as others.  Some people will use it and produce renders and slap them onto painted scenery etc.  I paint as much as I can and then render what would take longest.  Much of the concept art I produce I have to do faces and hands. These I can do, but it’s often quicker to get the bone structures and expressions closer to what I want with all those nasty foreshortening moves with a 3d render.  Then I simply cut out the bits I need, do the smudge technique I mentioned above, and repaint.  It’s a great way of getting a good start.  Use daz3d to get you started - it’s free, and links up with photoshop cs4 internally. (I think it has been able to do that since photoshop cs2, but I wouldn’t like to say for sure.)  I also recomend looking at Blender and google sketchup
10. Colour using overlays, and use masked colour layers for as much as you can. Flatten only at the last minute.  It saves alot of time repainting if you need a sudden change somewhere along the line.  Not strictly cheating.
11. Import textures.  Texture images are all over the place, and these are all customizable.  Just remember to read the small print on the licences.  
12. Use vector images someone else has created. You might have to pay, but integration into your own artwork is what these ‘vector packages’ are made for.  
13. Turn the vectors into photoshop brushes and stamp them over your image.
14. Finally, and this is going to make alot of people cringe, share the work with someone else.  If you are good at key figures, or concept cars etc and you can match up with someone who is fantastic at scenary then work together on a piece.  Less money, you have to split it, but if you are fast then the client will come back again.  If you have returning clients then you have money in the bank and spend less time chasing work.

Cheat.  Seriously.  If you are going to use a reference image just about as it is with little changing then don’t spend hours redrawing it.  Manipulate it and reuse it.  Don’t get all arty farty and prima-donna about it and start saying it isn’t real art etc.. Use photoshop brushes as stamps.  Do everything you can to save time. 

I would love to hear what you have to say - don’t forget to leave a comment.

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Now this has got to be one of the coolest and fastest ways I have ever seen to learn the shortcuts on photoshop. But you are going to have to watch it a couple of times to get the hang of it.  - if you see a blank space below, just give it 30 seconds to load up.

Enjoy!

 

Original content curtesy of Deke