HDRRendering

HDRRendering, often written as HDR Rendering, is a computer graphics technique for producing images with a wider range of luminance than standard dynamic range rendering. By preserving detail in both bright highlights and dark shadows, HDRRendering enables more realistic lighting, color, and contrast in scenes that would lose detail with conventional SDR pipelines.

Most HDRRendering pipelines render in a high dynamic range color space using floating point buffers, performing lighting calculations with physically based shading. The scene radiance is generated in a scene-referred space, then tone mapped or otherwise mapped to a display-referred color space for output. Tone mapping compresses the wide luminance range into the display’s limited dynamic range while aiming to preserve perceptual detail. Techniques include global operators, which apply a single curve, and local operators, which adapt based on local luminance.

Color management and encoding are integral to HDRRendering. This includes work with linear RGB spaces, gamma-corrected or perceptually uniform encodings, and device-specific color spaces. HDR display standards such as HDR10, HDR10+, and Dolby Vision define how high dynamic range content is encoded and presented, often using metadata to guide tone mapping and color processing on compatible devices.

Applications of HDRRendering span real-time graphics, such as video games and virtual reality, as well as offline rendering for film and visualization. Benefits include improved visibility of details across bright and dark regions and more natural, physically plausible lighting. Challenges involve higher computational and memory requirements, the need for compatible displays and pipelines, and potential inconsistencies in tone mapping across different devices or content.