Lighting & HDRI

Lighting is what makes a 3D scene feel real. In Facet, the fastest route to a convincing look is an HDRI environment — a 360° image that lights your scene and provides the reflections your materials pick up.

What an HDRI does

An HDRI (high dynamic range image) surrounds your scene with real-world lighting information. It:

• Lights everything with soft, natural light.
• Reflects in metallic and glossy surfaces.
• Refracts through glass and transmissive materials.

Choosing a good environment does most of the work of making materials look right — a studio HDRI gives clean product-shot lighting, while an outdoor or interior HDRI gives a completely different mood.

Setting an environment

Open the background / environment controls and pick an HDRI. The scene relights instantly. Try a few — the same material can look dramatically different from one environment to the next.

Background vs environment

The environment lights and reflects in your scene. The background is what appears behind your objects. You can show the environment as the background, or set a solid colour backdrop while still using the HDRI purely for lighting and reflections.

Tips

• If glass or chrome looks flat, it almost always means there's no environment set — see Materials.
• Match the environment to the story: warm interior HDRIs for cosy scenes, bright studio HDRIs for crisp product renders.
• The background colour behind your object strongly affects the mood — a dark backdrop makes glows and highlights pop.