HDR Trick Photography: Half-life 2 in Real Life.
Australian Nick Bertke came up with a cool idea: What if you could place those life-like character models from Half-Life 2 into real-life photos? Through a series of posts at the Garry’s Mod forums of Facepunch Studios, he detailed a process that resulted in some amazing images. (The posts also earned 17-year-old Bertke not a little fame in Half-Life 2 circles; read this interview with him at Deathfall.com.) (via: G4)
HDR lighting is the next “big thing” in gaming graphics technology. High Dynamic Range lighting adds a sense of realism beyond anything we’ve seen in games before. This technology is also finding it’s way into the digital photography market, as HDR Imaging allows for, seemingly, greater detail and saturation in compositions.
With these photographic renders from Nick Bertke, we’re seeing the creative symbiosis of these two technologies. Using a external light probe to record and measure levels of incident illumination in a given “real world” scene, Nick then creates a 2-d illumination environment that he can then map onto a 3-dimensional composition, so that the lighting in the virtual composition then makes the lighting in the original “real world” scene when it’s rendered.
It’s a clever little trick and the effect is quite amazing. I suppose we’ll be seeing this more and more in digital filmmaking and still-photography.