HDRI Sun Aligner
HDRI Sun Aligner is a Blender 2.8+ to 4.0+ addon for automatically rotating an object (e.g. a sun) to match the brightest point in a HDRI environment texture. Some ideas when this may be useful:
- Adding a sun to a scene rendered by EEVEE, as EEVEE cannot render shadows from HDRI environment textures
- Adding any light to enhance a scene, in alignment with direct light from the environment
- Improve a panorama created with Google Streetview app for use as an environment texture in Blender, see the following excellent video by Blender Daily: Easy HDRI Creation with just a Phone!
- For a nice overview of the addon, see the following video by The CG Essentials: Fixing Eevee HDRI Lighting
Blender Artists forum
A discussion thread about this addon can be found on the Blender Artists discussion forum: https://blenderartists.org/t/hdri-sun-aligner-v1-4/1142638
Usage
- Add a HDRI environment texture (equirectangular projection) to the World in Blender
- HDRI Sun Aligner is accessed from the panel to the right:
- Calculate the brightest point in the HDRI used for the environment by clicking on "Calculate sun position"
- A preview of the calculated position can be displayed in a new window by clicking on "Preview":
- Updated "Longitude and Latitude" values are displayed in the panel (can be changed manually)
- Select any object and click "Rotate object" to align it with a vector from the calculated point to origo
- To add a new sun (rotated in alignment with the current sun position), click "Add new sun"
- The new sun will be located in a new collection, "HDRI Sun Aligner"
Installation of HDRI Sun Aligner addon
- Download latest release from https://github.com/akej74/hdri-sun-aligner/releases (source as ZIP).
- Open Blender preferences -> addons and select "Install from file"...
- Activate the addon, "HDRI Sun Aligner"