How to use HDRIs in Unreal Engine 5

In this tutorial, I’ll do a deep dive into using HDRIs in Unreal Engine 5 with Lumen and Path Tracing.
I’ll show you how to use the HDRI Backdrop Plug-in, Lighting the background independently from your scene, show two different HDRIs, Light with your HDRI and show a completely different sky and I’ll also go through some common issues like black background, no lighting in your scene and how to fix fireflies aka hot pixels aka those little white specs all over your render.
00:00 - Intro
00:41 - Polyhaven.com/hdris
01:04 - Import HDRIs
01:24 - Enable and Setup HDRI Backdrop
01:54 - HDRI not lighting fix
02:31 - Change Component Name
03:01 - Projection Settings
03:53 - Camera Projection
04:16 - Backdrop and Skylight BOTH light
04:53 - Same HDRI, light background and scene independantly
06:07 - Different HDRI for Background and Lighting
06:45 - Increase reflection resolution
07:36 - Rotate Background and Lighting
08:35 - Light with HDRI, hide background
09:28 - Pathtracing
09:47 - Fix Black background
10:21 - Fireflies/White Specs/Hot Pixels
13:02 - Outro
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#virtualproduction #vfx #unrealengine #unreal #unrealengine5 #hdris #hdri #fireflies
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[@jbballaran]

Thank you so much! Big help on a current project I'm on at the moment!

[@balauceaalex8991]

this just made my day sir, please keep on doing what you do, grat work!

[@user-tp3eq8zf1z]

Very helpful and well explained, Thank you

[@qaisershehzad3501]

After long time I found a perfect and well explained tutorial. Great Work

[@AlexPearce3d]

Glad to hear that!

[@BorisKlimov]

This was very useful! Thanks

[@nurbdailym]

thanks for the tuto; On 5.2 after some fighting; I manage to make the hdri to work (ray was doing nothing, but size at 1000 fix bugs). I also find a way to change the HDR to a sphere (the static mesh in the content was not working at all) Speaking about fireflies, take care that limiting max value will also limit the specular value, if you render in EXR you will notice it.

[@farbodemaani1431]

thank you for the tutorial. and one other thing, can you tell me how you enable the path tracing loading bar?

[@abdullahabir3134]

Thanks so much, Alex for the Video. Explained it nicely. I will bookmark this vedio.

[@neiljamessloan]

Helpful man! Thanks

[@jotacoxabagaray]

Excellent tutorial, you gained one more subscriber!!

[@AlexPearce3d]

Thanks for the sub!

[@mikew8071]

Well done! Thanks!!

[@r0hc480]

hi. is there a way to have the volumetric cloud be over the hdri so even thats visible?

[@Ureroll]

Nice tutorial! lots of cool tips. In my project I am trying to render my scene with path tracing. The animation sequence starts in darkness and I then need to turn on the reflections and lighting from the backdrop, few light manipulations in sequencer with the hdri background to stay black. I understand there is no way to have reflections without lighting so I need a way to manipulate the plugin intensity from sequencer. Digging in the material I found the parameter array but the values are not named or I am too dumb to figure it out. Should I just try and learn do the skybox myself instead of relying on the plugin? If anyone knows how to pull that parameter into sequencer or any other solution I ll be forever grateful!

[@Constantinesis]

Hi, does using the HDRI backdrop overrides the Sun and Skylight components with its directional lihjts or do you need to turn them off?

[@shaneoshea3393]

I am getting hung up on how you made it so your HDRI Backdrop did not contribute any lighting. I followed your steps exactly but turning down my backdrop intensity still impacts my lighting in viewport using Lumen. Any ideas? Thanks for releasing this!

[@hotsauce7124]

Thank you

[@mojtabayaghoobi12]

Visible in ray tracing doesn't compatible with Lumen ??

[@lucutes2936]

thx

[@newearth33]

Hi Alex, is your plugin available on the marketplace? Also - interested - when might we use path tracer over realtime/lumen? Thanks!

[@newearth33]

Ah HDRI plus! awesome. : )

[@hawkwu123]

vary good tutorial for HDRI, do you try a sphere HDRI pic by drone instead of a dome HDRI ground?

[@AlexPearce3d]

No the HDRis I’ve been shooting have been from a dslr with multiple brackets which wouldn’t work for drone photography. It is possible to shoot non hdri 360 images from drones, of course and it’s something I could look into.

[@nerimanyilmaz9920]

Hi Alex, 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 and gives a red warning

[@BarryLester]

exr file does work. unreal treats exr files as textures and hdr files as cubemaps and project them differently. for exr files, you will need a uv-unwrapped skysphere mesh and create an issky material using the exr file.

[@AlexPearce3d]

One trick is if you change the extension from exr to .hdr before you import, it will read it correctly.

[@BarryLester]

@@AlexPearce3d I use an editor sphere as a custom skysphere and exr files actually work for me because editor sphere has uv. although I couldn't recall why I keep doing this rather than just use HDRI backdrop or feed an HDR file to skylight. Real time capture? No need to change mipmap settings? I guess old habits die hard.

[@najimohamed503]

I've imported a room hdri and for some reson its flat it's not afecting the skies i cant see the room's roof only the bottom pic

[@OnlyUpRising]

How use HDRI but without the sky ! I have the BP SKYSPHERE with clouds mouvement, I just want keep the montains from my HDRI but without the sky !? is it possible ?...

[@Dhieen]

im at 4:35 and the hdri still doesnt light my scene, why do you talk about path tracing on ue5 and not... Lumen??

[@JoshuaEiffel]

U DA MAN!

[@Lucifer-uh4dq]

How to hide the reflection and the background and keep only the lighting

[@GrekkoGaming]

Bro, when I package my project for PC target, the HDRI doesn't export, I have a blue sphere instead of, no background ! What is the solution ?

[@AlexPearce3d]

Packaging is a whole other thin. I’m not sure why it wouldn’t be packaged by default, but you may have to play with the packaging settings like full rebuild or include editor content.

[@GrekkoGaming]

@@AlexPearce3d I tried but no hdr after package game !

[@LORENZOCOLALONGO]

🙏🙏🙏🙏

[@alienrenders]

When I try to use HDRI, it's all distorted unless I use camera projection, but I don't want that. edit: Found the problem. The ones I have were meant to be used with SM_SkySphere mesh.

[@danodesigndanomotion2068]

You save My ass thanks

[@ericwilkinson2188]

yea turning off visibility turn off both my back drop and my lights............

[@AlexPearce3d]

Do you have the version from the epic marketplace? Of so do you have path tracer checked on? You’ll need to uncheck that if you not using path tracing. If you’re still having issues email is at hello at Lightsailvr dot com and if you can, send some screenshots, ue version number, etc.

[@BLBl-xd4jl]

@@AlexPearce3d Good afternoon! I have exactly the same problem, the lights go out!

[@BLBl-xd4jl]

@@AlexPearce3d but I use lumen

[@laf0106]

With no directional lights on your scene you wont get shadows from your objects.

[@AlexPearce3d]

Yeah :( for all these issues, I made my own plug in that has HDRis set up in a way, and locked the sun position to where it should be in the HDRi so that you can rotate them both with one slider, etc

[@tombittikoffer412]

LoL Pic format from HDRI Haven. Photoshop nor Unreal recognize it. Why even bother?

[@ozgedinc7691]

open hdr texture and set "Compression Settings" to default

[@AlexPearce3d]

If that doesn’t work one trick is to change the extension to .hdr, then import it. There’s probably a texture import preference you can change to make it work as well.

[@ozgedinc7691]

When I change the file format to .hdr, I still encounter the same issue. So far, the only solution I have found is adjusting the Compression Settings 🥴@@AlexPearce3d

[@ozgedinc7691]

btw I'm new on UE. so i search on the internet. thats not my solution 😃