Blender 3D Cookbook

Setting image based lighting (IBL)

The image based lighting technique is almost essential in computer graphics nowadays; as the name itself says, it's a technique to light a scene based on the pixel color information of an image, usually an hdr image (High Dynamic Range image); other image formats can also work, although not so well.

In Blender it's possible to obtain IBL both in BI and in Cycles, although with different modalities.

Getting ready

Start Blender and load the previously saved Gidiosaurus_3D_layout.blend file; save it as Gidiosaurus_IBL.blend.

How to do it…

We can divide this recipe into two parts: IBL in Cycles and in Blender Internal.

Image based lighting in Cycles

Let's start with the Cycles Render engine:

1. First, split the 3D window vertically ...