I hate deadlines, but I wouldn't get anything done without them either.

This time it was ACM SIGGRAPH, asking for all the material for this upcoming SIGGRAPH Class. And because Smart IBL should definitely be on there, the entire sIBL team was working really hard on updating all the sIBL Loader scripts. GO TEAM!

So, what's new?

• sIBL-Edit is now available as Linux version, in 32 and glorious 64 bit.
• Lightwave sIBL loader has a new thumbnail view and works on Mac and PC, v9.3 and up.
• Maya sIBL loader supports mental ray production shaders and rayswitch in Maya2008.
• 3dsMAX sIBL loader works with mental ray, fixed VRay (again).
• a brand new loader for modo is about to join the ranks, stay tuned...

As usual, here is also a new sIBL set of the month ready for you to download, and the race for the hottest HDR on Flickr has started over again...

Happy May!

Wow, what a crazy episode!

It was almost intimidating to do my first podcast appearance among all these internet celebrities for, but definitely fun. Alex Lindsay asked me lots of questions about my book, and it seems the TWiP folks really liked it. They also have a Flickr challenge going where you can win the HDRI Handbook, as well as minor giveaways like Aperture and Lightroom. :) This show was really about some big announcements;

Alex announced DVGarage's dive deep into the new Aperture 2.1 SDK. First plugin is already out: dpMatte for greenscreen keys, coming up is Conduit (sweet nodal compositing), and also HDRToner - yes - for tonemapping right inside of Aperture. Lots of good stuff. Listen to the episode yourself!

The second big announcement came from me:

SIGGRAPH 2008 Class: HDRI for Artists

A nice little gang of presenters is coming together to teach about HDRI at Siggraph:
my friend Kirt Witte from the Savannah College of Art and Design, Hilmar Koch from ILM, Zap Andersson from mental images, Gary M. Davis from Autodesk, and of course, yours truly.
If you happen to be in LA for Siggraph, don't miss the show!

Paul Debevec doesn't need much of an introduction - he is one of the founding fathers of HDRI. His latest research is so way out there, yet he has the incredible talent to explain everything so it makes perfect sense.

Watch this and prepare to be amazed:

If you want to see more detailed information about Paul's projects, visit www.debevec.org. Check out his upcoming events calender, he will be touring Germany next month.

Oh, and by the way - the Lightstage shown in this video is in fact out of the lab already. If you just want to rent one for your own production, you can do so. Without any R&D and handcrafting on your end, just a simple plug-and-play product from Aguru Images.

It's that time of the month again: Update time. Lots of updates, most of them from other folks:

Photomatix 3.0 is out

Available for Mac and PC.
Lots of new features:

• support for the latest RAW formats
• feature-based alignment
• more accurate tonemapping preview
• improved exposure blending

The most visible change is a "Workflow Shortcuts" palette with the most common tasks. Very handy, but in my opinion they shouldn't reinvent the wheel when a simple toolbar would have been just fine (and wasted less real estate on my screen).

Anyway, my friend Uwe Steinmüller has put together a full review on www,outbackphoto.com. Check it out, and grab your update!

XDepth Plugin for Lightwave

This is really great news. Not only because I happen to be a Lightwave user, and I can now save Gigs of drive space by using this space-saving HDR format for my big HDR panoramas. (We talked about XDepth before.)
No, the great thing about this is the demonstrated sign of commitment. Trellis Management Co. Ltd., as awkward this name sounds to me, has given away XDepth plugins for Photoshop and Lightwave within a single month. Now, if they would get it to work next month in Fusion, I'd be happy rendering all day long things I might not even need in HDR, and our systems guy wouldn't kick me in the back. Add Firefox, Lightroom, Aperture, After Effects, Maya, 3dMAX, XSI, Shake, Combustion, and [insert your app here], and we actually can call XDepth an image standard.

Last but not least - here is some news from the related frontier of digital imaging:

Greg Downing shoots 270 Gigapixel Panoramas

If you ever tried to shoot and stitch a single Gigapixel pano, you know that this is a painful and time consuming process. Shooting 270 of these bastards, in 3 1/2 months - unthinkable for mere mortals. Even for a veteran HDR/panoshooter like Greg Downing this is a project of crazy scale.
Read this amazing story on VRMag!

And yes, before you ask, of course there is a new sIBL of the month, and the race for the hottest HDR on Flickr has started all over again.

Have fun,
Christian Bloch

OK, so now that I have thousands of German readers, I finally gave in and translated most of the HDRLabs site to German. At least most of the static pages, don't expect this blog to be truly bilingual anytime soon... The language switch is done server-sided, so if your browser/system language is set to German, you should be switched automatically.

And I have a special treat for my English readers (which make up 40%, by the way):
You get a sneak peak tutorial chapter! How awesome is that?