HDRI from Sphere Reflection capture Unreal 4?
polycounter lvl 2
This may be a really bizzare question but can I get an HDRI from a Screen reflection capture in Unreal? I have almost finished a project and have the lighting set up but I am texturing a few assets in Substance painter. Was just curious if I could somehow rip a HDRI of sorts so I can texture with a similar colour and lighting set up so the texturing is more accurate in my application?
Replies
I would suggest just getting a new HDRI from elsewhere and using it in both apps. Rather than trying to rip one from Unreal. If you render one out from a sphere or a panoramic camera, you'll probably be losing some of the high dynamic range, which directly affects the quality of the lighting it casts. Better to start from a common "raw" file. https://polyhaven.com has a bunch of great HDRIs, worth a look.
Look into tweaking your tonemapping/colour management in Substance rather than trying to match HDRI environment - the idea behind PBR is that materials are supposed to be 'correct' under any lighting situation. This is not true if there is a mismatch in the way colours are represented between your authoring program and your rendering program, so even when you match the lighting you will find there are discrepancies.
I'm still using the Legacy Colour management in Substance so i'm not sure what the solution for OpenColorIO is, but i'm sure someone has come up with a preset that will match Unreal engine better by now. Otherwise I can drop what I use for the legacy colour manager here if you're interested, I'll just need a little bit to write it up.