At a recent 3DS London Geek Night, Henry spotted his personal favourite PG Sky '1847 Dusk Sun' being used in a promotional film for Red Bull by the talented people at Rewind.co
The video can be viewed on Rewind's website.
'1233 Sun Clouds'
2 new skies added to www.pg-skies.net today, '1213 Cloudy Blue Sky' and '1233 Sun Clouds'. Taken 20 minutes apart, you have the choice of the sun obscured by clouds or the with the sun visible. 1233 includes a version with a corrected sun intensity.
New Sun: gamma 1.0
Original HDR: gamma 0.75
Originial HDR: gamma 1.0
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.
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.
You will need to be quick, as it is already almost sold out, but I am doing another State of Art Academy Masterclass in July.
Info here:
http://www.stateofartacademy.com/calendario/eng-peter-guthrie-lighting-masterclass2/
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
2 new 14k skies added to www.pg-skies.net, 0709 Dawn and 1935 Late Sun.
1935 (above) has a lovely warm low sun. Note how different it looks when simply rotating the sky through 90, 180, 270 degrees.
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.
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.
Finally, a new sky on www.pg-skies.net, '1958 Night', which is a DARK sky. To be used when you want a really dark night sky.
