MakeHDR creates HDRIs inside Nuke, Fusion or Natron
Visual effects lighting TD Vahan Sosoyan has released MakeHDR, a neat new OpenFX plugin for merging source images into HDRIs inside compositing applications like Nuke and Fusion.
The plugin, which is free for output up to 2K in resolution, is intended to keep HDRI set-ups fully procedural.
Create HDRIs procedurally inside your OpenFX compositing application
Although there is no shortage of software for merging LDR source images into HDRI files, MakeHDR is unusual in that it works directly inside OpenFX-compatible applications.
According to Sosoyan, it “works consistently in compositing applications like Fusion, Natron and Nuke”.
The plugin, which began as a personal project, was created in order to avoid the need to use third-party tools, and keep HDRI set-ups fully procedural.
GPU-accelerated for users with CUDA-compatible Nvidia GPUs
MakeHDR merges up to 16 source Exposure Values with 8, 10 or 12-bit depth processing. The plugin provides “user-friendly tonemapping”, and controls including Samping rate and Smoothness.
Processing is GPU-accelerated via CUDA, but there is a CPU solver for users with non-Nvidia GPUs, and for Mac users, since CUDA no longer supports macOS.
Pricing and system requirements
MakeHDR is available for OpenFX-compatible applications running on Windows, Linux and macOS. It has been tested on Windows 10, CentOS 7 and macOS 10.13.
The free version of the plugin limits output to 2K resolution; the Pro version, which has no restrictions on resolution, costs $20.