Updated PG SKIES

Those of you who bought '1714 Clear Sky' should have received an automated email from www.pg-skies.net notifying you of an update to 1714. As I have mentioned in previous posts, I am going through a process of updating old skies that feature a strong sun to include a new alternative version.

When shooting HDR skies, it is very difficult to capture the full dynamic range of the sun as it is so incredibly bright. To combat this, in the past (following on from Bertrand Benoit's lead) I adopted a workflow that involves lowering the gamma of the HDR to make the bright parts of the sky brighter. This method has its drawbacks though, mostly in that it makes the colours in the sky a lot harsher, and sometimes makes the sky appear too bright in relation to the sun.

A few months ago I saw a post on the corona forum by dubcat who shared a nice method for adding a rendered sun (with the correct intensity) in to one of my HDR skies. To me it feels like a slightly more scientific method than simply painting in a brighter sun with Photoshop (also can work well), and I liked the results I was getting.

The new version included with 1714 is called 1714 Clear Sky_NewSun.hdr and to use you just need to remember to return the gamma value to 1.0 otherwise you'll get some very ugly results.

We at The Boundary used 1714 NewSun for our 87 Park project for Renzo Piano and were very happy with the results.

1935 Late Sun - Triple-D

My favourite 3 images from Triple-D's latest project, Farmhouse by Maas Architects

Triple-D made great use of the new '1935 Late Sun' sky on www.pg-skies.net and went with the 'New Sun' version of the HDR which has the intensity of the sun artificially corrected so that you don't need to play around with gamma settings.

I'm preparing a new blog post going into this in more detail.


BLACK FRIDAY 2015

Its discount PG SKIES time of year again.

Head over to www.pg-skies.net and use the following codes:

BLACK20 - Baseline 20% off
BLACK30 - 30% off orders over 100 euros
BLACK40 - 40% off orders over 250 euros
BLACK50 - 50% off orders over 500 euros

'1735 Clear' HDR Sky Update

Just wanted to share 4 renderings using the updated version of '1735 Clear Sky', which features a more accurate sun intensity. More details about this change to follow.

If you have previously bought this sky from www.pg-skies.net you should already have received an email with new download instructions.

360 Panorama

Another 360 this time using the work I did for Tom Phifer & Partners as a base.

Double click for full screen, or if on a smartphone/tablet, click here

The HDRi sky I am using here is an updated version of 1735 Clear Sky which I have edited to adjust the strength of the sun. This means you no longer need to employ the lowered gamma workflow that I have been using up till now.

I'll update 1735 in the store soon, anyone who bought it from www.pg-skies.net should get an update notification email and can re-download for free.


Lake Lugano House - Vray for Sketchup

You might recognise this house from a previous post on this blog, Lake Lugano House by Jame Pickford. This one is different in that it was all modelled, assembled and rendered within Skethcup using Vray for Sketchup. There is a really excellent tutorial on Ronen Bekerman dot com which I encourage you to go and read.

Interesting to see how he uses HDRi Skies (1957 Dusk Clear) in Vray for Sketchup and uses proxies to handle complex geometry and to see all of the other ways in which Vray for Sketchup has developed since I last used it several years ago.

Great work by David Santos of LAB Visualizacion