HDRI in Unreal Engine 5 - Everything You Need to Kknow

[@smilingdungeonmaster7800]

@12:37 AFAIK the reason for different meshes having different effects is that most meshes have their normals facing outwards. I.e. any texture is applied on the outer side of the mesh. If we use a mesh as a Skybox however, we are actually sitting inside the mesh, looking outward. If this mesh only has outward facing normals and a onesided material applied, this material is only shown when looking at the mesh from the outside, and is completely translucent when looked at from the inside. The skylight still produces correct lighting, but since there is nothing outside the mesh to reflect any of this light we just see a black void. To fix this, we must either use a mesh with inward facing normals (like the designated Skydome, or Skysphere, or use a twosided material which is shown on both sides of the mesh. Hope that helps shedding some light .. pun intended.

[@espirite]

Thankyou so much. This really is the best HDRI tutorial i have found so far and covered everything i wanted to know.

[@matthewpaquette]

Easily the most helpful tutorial. Thank you.

[@Bernwolff]

I have been using 3D software for 10 years now and I am currently working on a project that has to use UE5. The last couple of days have been just painful. Thanks for the tip about EXR/HDR files!

[@ayanalikhan5766]

hii, your videos are always helpful, you are the only one i found who makes a video for a topic and we do not need to search for another video again! i mean you cover everything about the topic in a single video, lots of love, and i have a small request can we get a tutorial for how to work with aces for compositing s log footages with green screen and davinci ? i would really appreciate and lots of people who really struggling with this, i hope this msg reaches you:)

[@bendvfx]

Thank you so much. This is the best HDRI tutorial in UE5 by far that solved all of my problems and has answers to all of my question about it. Thank you for comprehensive and easy to understand instructions!

[@hawkwu123]

I use Unreal Engine 5.3.2. and HDRI DROP working fine in simulation mode but after I package the program the HDRI picture will only display on bottom of DOME. Do you have any idea for it?

[@lisatapelefond7755]

Same problem here, did you solved it ? I tryed anything, but no

[@DTSHSkh9hw]

This problem still exists in lastest 5.3, any solutions here?

[@paulintoronto758]

Thanks Jon, that made my day a little easier

[@vincentgrieu1290]

Very interesting As always ! For the geometry in the HDRI, can we simply select the geometry and flip the normal instead of two sided material ?

[@JonJagsNee]

yeah man! That also works :)

[@robertomachado7581]

Great tutorial! Great teaching skills! A million thanks!

[@hydeman75]

Thanks for the informations , i wonder if its possible to create a gradient texture in unreal engine to put in the hdri backdrop to have a procedural background for product rendering . I haven't found a way yet

[@SuperAazim]

like other render softwares vary or corona.. how do i see the hdri only in the reflection? please let me know.. thanks

[@adamruben8831]

Dear Jon, thank you for your time and effort. I create stories and only use renders, Would you by any chance know to render without rendering the HDRI image and only its lighting? I have tried to go to Geometry/Visible but when clicking that the lighting itself also disappears. Any advise would be greatly appreciated, All the best from Copenhagen, Adam

[@JonJagsNee]

Use a regular skylight instead and replace the lighting with a specific cube map 🤟🏻

[@adamruben8831]

Thank you Sir. Just curious. Will that always give the same result as adding HDRI as light?

[@SpectreKelevra]

Excellent video, Didn't even know about this until I saw your vid.

[@Hliouxas]

A question. When i use hdri backdrop to light my scene. And when i try to build my reflection captures in my scene. The build isn't accurate and the majority of static meshes in my scene aren't in the reflection. When i disable the hdri, the build is correct.

[@Ryu_Hayabusa]

“You didn’t need to know” 😄 Thanks!

[@niiranen]

I haz question: I´ve been using skylight with somewhat ok results. I have bought ArchInteriors for UE from Evermotion, and kinda like accident deleted everything but left the skylight. Imported an HDRI to it and the results are much better than with the default one. Could I save that Skylight as a file which I could then import to my new projects or should I just copy/paste it everytime from the AI_for_UE-project?

[@Porteofermo66]

Hello very good videos. do you know how i can render in exr or png but without the backdrop hdri ? (but keep the lighting). thanks a lot !

[@JonJagsNee]

Use a skylight instead of an HDRI Backdrop :)

[@alharbi1314]

your vids are the best man

[@coapa_760]

i'm currently going through a lighting course, and they used a sphere and added the hdri in there. and it was pretty interesting. haha

[@SamhainBaucogna]

Thank you very much, precious tutorial!

[@davidkerman1732]

Great tutorial thank you. I brought in my HDR file and it's crazy bright. I adjusted the power to .25 and it looks good, but is that normal? Also when you rotate the HDRI background, it looks like only the BG rotates, not the image inside the skylight. Thoughts?

[@pushthebutton4602]

How do I make a white background in my scene the but still have effect of an HDRI background image?

[@Sanjay-lp9dd]

hey what about shadows any ways to get it actually from the HDRi

[@danielalasso9676]

Hello. I have a problem. I wonder if you can help me please. I have two types of ilumination, one is Sun and another is HDRI. When I set up render with HDRI, the render comes out with Sun. I wonder if there is a way to configure HDRI as main ilumination source .

[@adamruben8831]

Dear Jon, I am sorry to bother you again. But I'm trying to light up an interior with Skylight together with the HDRI cube map and I can't get it to work. There is light outside the room (in the world) but not inside. Any ideas? Thank you in advance. Cheers, Adam

[@ModelWhatYouSee]

Anyone have any idea how to HIDE THE DOME MESH and how to get SkyAtmostphere to be effected by HDRI backdrop can't find anything online

[@OMG3Dmax]

hint friend, how to rotate the HDR map relative to the center?

[@AysenKocakabak]

this was really helpful, thank you for the excellent video.

[@ramiroyelinek9949]

Hello brother, maybe you know how to solve my problem with the hdri dropbox, when packaging the game, only the base of the hdri materializes and not the dome that remains with the default gray material of unreal, I hope you can help me and thank you very much!

[@JonJagsNee]

Oh man, that is something I'm not quite sure of since I'm mainly doing vfx and motion graphics. My first guess would be to make sure that the HDRI BAckdrop plugin is enabled upon packaging. Not sure if in the game build that is something you need to enable as well. My alternate suggestion is to swap out the HDRI Back drop object with a separate skylight and SM_SkySphere.

[@unrealhabitat]

This is great, thank you man

[@zombiespacebears]

Do u know how to use big film enviorment packs in unreal

[@Cioum]

Thanks! That was super useful !

[@cj5787]

silly easy trick: you can just change the exr file extension to .hdr and Unreal will take it with no problems.

[@mitchellrcohen]

NO WAY

[@mitchellrcohen]

Dude. Thank you.

[@cj5787]

@@mitchellrcohen hahaha no problem bro.

[@nerimanyilmaz9920]

Hi, There is only one Hdri in my hdri file and I downloaded some Hdri from Hdri Heaven and when I want to upload them, I upload the Hdri and it does not appear at all annd it looks red ,I hope you can help me. thank u

[@tmaintv]

Do they work with pathtracer yet?

[@Mynistrh3ll]

Thanks but when i change from "EnviroDome" to "Sphere" everything turns black and i can't import custom HDRI, that's strange.

[@JonJagsNee]

Yeah, sadly that's because the default material settings for the HDRI Backdrop is not set to 2 sided. Do me a favor and when you're searching for a new mesh, search "SM_SkySphere" :) That should work

[@RandMpinkFilms]

extremely helpful walkthrough. Thank you!!!

[@RandMpinkFilms]

You really covered everything. Thank you for the two-sided material tip. Was looking for that button!!

[@travisnguyen1475]

Hi, how to using HDRI Studio and render still image with white background? rendering product. Try searching many months

[@smilingdungeonmaster7800]

In case you didn’t find out yet. Change the Skylight‘s settings to use the HDRI (which will provide the lighting) and set the Skysphere (or the standard Skydome, whichever you use) to use a simple white material. The skydome is just for the optics (so how you will see it in the scene). The skylight is the actor which actually produces the lighting. If the skylight doesn‘t have an HDRI assigned it will kind of reflect was is shown on the Skydome, otherwise it completely ignores what is shown on the skydome and generates lighting according to the set up HDRI. Hope that helps.

[@tlabd9582]

can hdri texture be a video/image sequence?

[@bezpuza]

When I add HDRI to the project, my objects are turning black if ray tracing and lumen are turned on!!(((

[@joelwesterveltaia2196]

Thanks, nice tutorial.

[@sergeibargamotov8931]

Thanks it helped a lot

[@Greenrobotvp]

Love your videos!

[@BonitoXv]

How can I render movie with alpha channel using the HDRI backdrop?

[@JonJagsNee]

Use the skylight instead and change your cube map to the HDRI 😊

[@scarabrae]

Very helpful! Cheers

[@Ureroll]

Careful when messing around with the plugin material, it will affect every project, including the cloned projects. I did not work on a copy of the material, did not fully know what I was doing (trying to change the intensity in sequencer) and could not put at his starting values. Those parameters in the array are poorly named if named at all. The only way I found to fix it was to verify the engine version and that reset ALL plugins, and that medicine could be way worse than the disease if you changed other plugin settings and lost track of the changes overtime.

[@dollabexgamed3]

The zero on location doesn't work for me the screen still shakes

[@dollabexgamed3]

I fixed his problem by changing the location to World_Absolute

[@alexzanderthegeek]

Very helpful!

[@khaled1saidi277]

Awesome thanks

[@moadhadi6277]

Thank you

[@marcelobittencourt2834]

pretty good

[@katt-tv]

After effects timeline, hdri 4k NO. At least make an 8k timeline for your sequence/single frame renders.

[@shabanowsky7361]

whatever you say, it does not work. I am left with a black screen after changing the geometry. This sucks - dislike. Have a nice day.

[@JonJagsNee]

Sorry to hear that you're experiencing that man. I took a moment of my day to test and I didn't run into any issues. Sadly, Unreal just be stupid sometimes. If I may suggest, double check the camera exposure in your post process volume and/or camera post process settings. Lastly, the geometry you selected may actually be too small or too big. Go under the HDRI Backdrop scale and try multiple scales of the geo you are trying to solve. the HDRI back drop is technically not intended to swap geometry but my tutorial here is the work around. . Hope this helps! Have a nice day to you as well :)

[@heisenberg3206]

yea this guy's a fraud fr

[@elena.mille.]

@@JonJagsNee same issue. nothing helped

[@erickcanales1660]

5 months later and i have a solution. I had the same issue and using the sphere_inversenormals geometry instead of the normal sphere fixed the issue for me. sometimes you just have to play around with some things when softwares dont work exactly how you want them to. its just apart of learning. no need for the dislike this was a great video!!! found this out in like 5 minutes btw lol

[@chelo111]

please don't be wearing dresses and be talking about unreal engine, thank you....