In terms of just knowing to do it on your own. Its really much easier to load a TG exr and just go through all the sliders. In the case of photomatix, you can switch back and forth between global and local at any time. The differences are immediately visible.
Really would not get hung up on the technical details about how one mode works over the other. It really will mostly be esthetic. you can demo photomatix if you want. Its really easy and clear, and you see the result as soon as you click or move a slider.
What soft are you playing with? HDR efex pro? don't know it, is it nice?
here is a screen grab of the UI of matrix (please post one of your soft as I am very interested). global and local are the "method" in the upper left area there are now more than two methods, on the right is a column of presets that can be fun. But they are presets, so... (ignore the image, its just loaded so I could get the UI window up)
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QuoteJust wondering if anyone had any tips specific to tone mapping spherical panos
I realize you are asking only about spherical, but for a still there is not any difference that I yet know of....
ITs super easy. Really the harder part is if you are shooting bracketed photos with a real camera. just using a TG exr is so easy. I always save a tiff and and exr, than process the exr in the different methods/modes. Then take all the images into photoshop as layers and work on them again in the traditional way. This way I always can use the "photo real" and the enhanced, together and blend in and out what needs it. So the TG tiff render, and than two tone mapped images, on pho real by dynamic and one enhanced (sometime several enhanced) depending on if I get several looks that would blend well.
Here is the problem I find with animation, and that will likely be even more of a problem with vr animation. When batch pricing 30fps and if there is a slight to great change in lighting from one second to the next, than all of your settings are going to be out of whack (slider settings) dose not mater if you tone local or global. And that is with the camera seeing in one direction only.
With spherical, the camera is seeing in every direction at one time. So it will either batch process better or be so bad it can't be done at all. Don't know yet.
So then image editors won't work on a per frame basis. I think that the only way to get a good result is the compositing method.
Here is one of the first TG renders I did back in 2009, and then later animated and batch processed.
https://vimeo.com/38144885its a test of batch processing tone mapped images from TG and photomatix. I did a bunch of this stuff but this is the only thing I ever shared.
I normally just throw it away after I get an answer for my self.
Anyway, the only reason that you don't see a shit load of issues, is because the camera is moving only forward, and the light is basically flat over all. (The look of it is just some pointless style choices when editing and mapping) But I also know from other tests that when you have complex lighting like with a storm or something, and the camera or the scene is changing, it is nearly to impossible batch process, because all your settings will stop making sense from one second to the next.
The reason I say all that^^ is because in a spherical render the camera is looking in every direction at one time, and the scene may be changing in an animation, so its got to be really complex to pull of. I think you can't use an image editor like PS or matix for video images and animation images. You have to composite or use a video HDRI editor.
Quotebut the edges then do not match
The images must be put together before you maps them. If they are already together, than there should be no seams and no difference between all the images. If there are, than this is a result of the software you used not doing its job right. For example, in auto pano pro, when you join as many as 10000 images together the software detects the differences between all the images and corrects to one new image. I just know that from experience. you should with good soft, be able to take a hundred images from different cameras and join them to one image without any issues.
But this is all moot, since when PS renders your winning entry, they won't be able to reproduce the esthetic you found. Since they will have to know the soft you use and all of the settings.
lol,
just spewing info.
