HdriLand.com -Royalty Free HDRI Enviroment Maps for Free Download. Full 360 degree Panoramas.

HdriLand is a website created by myself to give away free hdri enviroment maps for use in 3D modeling and rendering. Hdri's or Environment, are created by using high dynamic range images and stitching them together in a panorama software. When imported into a 3D image they map themselve to the inner sphere of the scene to create a full 360 background. Here is an example of an image map created for using as an environment in 3D.

And here's how it looks rendered in any 3D modeling program

Rather than creating lights to light your scene or object you can simply add an HDRI or enviroment  map and the scene will be lit based on the map chosen. The map also provides  reflections to objects that need reflections to appear naturally in a scene. If the map is created correctly it will also create realistic shadows for your scene. Here is an example placed within an HDRI environment showing the light and reflections as well as the shadow information.

You can see the object appears naturally within the scene with realistic reflections as well as nice shadows. Unless very many lights are need for a scene an enviroment  map might be the best way to go. Although an HDRI map can also create mutliple light sources if the scene actually has different light sources in it like the one below.

In a scene like this one the object would take on the properties of the lights in the scene. The cool flourescent light as well as the warm incandescent light. As well as lighting you can get really cool reflections to make your scene more interesting. This image has really cool reflections but they might be challenging to use in a scene that doesn't include the HDRI background.

You may ask...what if I don't want the background, just the reflections? Well you would render the object or animation and save with alpha information to composite in a program like After Effects. Like in this example below.