Variety Features Use of High Dynamic Range Imagery in Films Up for Best Visual Effects at the Oscars

An article on the films nominated for best visual effects at this year’s Academy Awards focused on the visual effects supervisors’ use of high dynamic range imagery, or HDRI, as a key to achieving the needed level of realism.  The use of HDRI lighting in films is a technique that ICT’s Paul Debevec developed in his postdoctoral work at UC Berkeley in the late 1990’s. Debevec now serves as ICT’s associate director for graphics research.
In the article, Tim Burke, a VFX supervisor on “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1” explained that taking reference photographs of what was being shot gave the team complete lighting conditions for any scene.
“The light falling on the effects the same way it falls on the things that are not effects is what makes the difference,” he said.
Read the story here
Learn more about Debevec’s Graphics Work at ICT
Read Paul Debevec’s SIGGRAPH 98 paper introducing HDRI lighting.