[Bubbaloo]

Herve is correct!

Also http://www.hdri-locations.com/

[Asmithey]

Great! Thanks guys. I have read posts where people are saying they do not get hard shadows with HDRI lighting. Is there a certain type of HDRI, or strategy, that you need to use to get hard shadows?

Thanks.

Aaron

[Hervé]

this one is a hard shadows hdri..

http://www.divshare.com/download/16927918-552

[Bubbaloo]

Shadow hardness is determined by the quality (exposure steps) of the HDRI and the light source of the HDRI. So if you want hard shadows you have to pick an HDRI with a sunny sky as opposed to a cloudy sky which will produce soft shadows.

[Asmithey]

Thanks Guys. I will try the HDR file Herve.

Thanks.

[Asmithey]

Brian,

I will try exporting an .hdr out of VUE with no clouds in the image. Maybe that will produce hard shadows. The .hdr that Herve suggested, produces very nice hard shadows.

Thanks

[Asmithey]

Here is WIP update. Blender/ Maxwell. I added a mountain with pine trees particle instanced to the mountain via weight painting in Blender. I modeled the pine tree with the Blender add-on Sapling. Nice add-on by the way. This whole scenes only takes 1 min. 20 sec. to export from Blender to Maxwell. Compared to the times I get from Form-Z exporting to Maxwell, it is very impressive. I am going to render a Z-Depth pass. I used an HDRI, the one Herve gave to me. I will find a nice sky image or render one in VUE to go with the image as well.

Any comments/ tips welcome. Not sure on the sun angle too. It seems a bit blown out.