5/x HDR scene environment

Close the material editor and open up the Environment window by pressing “8“ or by clicking the Render menu Environment tab. At this point please make sure you’ve downloaded the .hdr map we’ve mentioned in the first part of this tutorial. Click the Background map slot button next to the white color swatch and double click the Bitmap entry from the Material Browser.

Browse to the folder in which you’ve downloaded the .hdr file and double click the map. A HDRI Load Settings window will appear. Just leave the settings to their default value and click ok .

While keeping the environment tab open, activate the Material Editor {} by pressing “m” and drag and drop the HDRI map to an empty material slot and set it as an instance. Once done, select the new material and set its Mapping to spherical.

Now scroll down to the material’s output tab, expand it and set the RGB Level to 4.

To get some blingier results, add a dent map to the red material’s Bump Map slot. Play around with the size settings and whatnot.

You can now render your scene by pressing F10 and clicking the render button. You should get something like this:

And that’s all for this tutorial. Piece of cake.

The End

P.S: Keep in mind that this was rendered at the lowest rendering settings and that tweaking them and the HDR image will produce much better results. But that’s another tutorial.