Lighting environments

yes, you can make your own lighting environments. the instructions are here in the forums somewhere. i'll give you my memory of how to do it, but you shld find the instructions to be sure.

you take any .jpg file and simply manually convert the extension to .exr . next, start up filter forge and somewhere in the menu system there is a menu item of something like 'import .exr' file or 'convert to exr' or something like that... hang on, i better start up FF and see...

ah, there it is. under "Tools" is an item called "HDRI import". click on that and it will bring up a window. click on the 'browse' button and browse to your .jpg that you converted to an .exr . once that's there, add in a name for your new environmental lighting and click on 'import'.

be advised, this takes a LONG time to process! it is highly recommended you do a file no larger than 400 x 400 pixels, especially if you've never done one before. i tend to like 200 x 200 better as the processing is much faster. a 400 x 400 can take 15 minutes or more, depending on all the variables involved, machine speed, image and so on.

once the file is converted by the program, it shld put the new file into your lighting environments area for you... if memory serves. if that's wrong, then simply move the new file to the proper area within the FF file structure and it will show up the next time you load FF.

you can use larger files, but it will take considerably longer to process per the size increase. 400 x 400 was what was recommended by FF, inc. back when we first were told of this process.

i've done this many times and have quite a few of my own environments. if the resulting files werent so big, i'd post them here on the forums. the resulting file will have the extension .ffenv and be in the folder 'my environments'.

actually, i'm going to try and load one of my smaller environments here to the forums with this post. let's see if this works.

nope, i get an 'incorrect file type...' type message. the file was only 355k, so the file type must not be currently recognized by the forums. perhaps we could get FF, inc. to change that.

you're welcome

i just hope i got it right

R. A. Weaver, you may want to review this help section.