Lighting Tests in Unity HDRP with a custom HDRI Sky

My first venture into Unity's HDRP to explore PBR materials, HDRI skies and volumectric lighting.

I started by creating a HDRI by making multiple copies of a Free Asset Skybox texture at different exposures and then using Photoshop's Merge to HDR function to create a 32 bit texture. I then colour balanced it further to get the colour vibrancy I desired.

This was then added to a Unity HDRP project along with a few other free assets including 4K textures for the rocks and sphere. From there it was then a matter of setting up the scene and carefully balancing the HDRI sky, directional light and spot light against the exposure and fog.

Once I was happy with that I added several layers of Post Processing: Bloom, Vignette, Saturation, Colour Curves and Shadows Midtones and Highlights.

Finally, I grabbed Kronnect's HDRP Lens Flares to finish the desired look before animation the camera and the sphere.

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Wild West Lighting and Post FX explortation involved using Poly Perfect's Ultimate Pack (Wild West Scene) and a HDR sky cubemap with slight overcast Lux Values for lighting
- Sunlight: 36000
- HDRI Sky: 11000
- Exposure: 12.35

Post Processing was used to give it a toy model feel and enhance the tan profile of the image to give it more of an appropriate old time aesthetic.