HDR Mastering

HDR Mastering

I worked with Stoic's art team to establish an HDR mastering strategy as the game had been authored in LDR. This meant a lot of content was made with a presumed Tonemapper which, in turn, meant once HDR was enabled, values were all over the place. We went biome by biome and adjusted the lighting, post processing and tone mapper to establish a solid HDR image and match LDR to that.
Other efforts included injecting all of the VFX materials with an intensity corrective function as this was an area the previously used tone mapper was masking.
I don't well enough know how I'd show before and afters of HDR mastering on a single web page, but play the game and you'll be able to see the final result in HDR. This was my first time approaching HDR authoring and benefited greatly from the Guidance of Don Smith.
The video below shows HDR analysis running in a tool I was able to recieve from partners in the Advanced Technology Group at MS.