CGside shows how to make countless HDR skies for Skydomes and Lighting using Maya’s Bifrost and Arnold in a procedural workflow.

When working with skydomes and the HDR images they require, you have a couple of choices. You can use photographic resources, or you can build a custom asset procedurally. This new tutorial from CGside covers how to make HDR skies using Bifrost Graph in Maya. The tutorial shows how to use Bruce Lee’s Cloud Modeling Toolset in Bifrost as a fast way to create nearly infinite HDR skies.

Arnold Camera Types.

Arnold has special cameras for rendering the required LatLong (or curvilinear-perspective) format to wrap back into the skydome. Arnold lets you have some more options for camera types in 3D. One of the kinds of cameras, the VR camera type is perfect for creating a custom HDR image that you can use inside a skydome.