After some trial-and-error, I finally figured out how to render skybox faces using the camera animation keys in Terragen 3 (Pro w/Animation).
Initially I tried simply setting 5 keys (one for each face, ignoring down). Everything rendered fine when jumping to a specific keyframe and rendering manually, but as soon as I rendered a sequence, the camera angles were off and the images wouldn't line up.
To get it working, I had to set 3 camera rotation keys per box face, and then use the middle one when rendering the sequence.
My camera rotation keyframes are:
1,2,3: x=0, y=0, z=0 (front)
4,5,6: x=0, y=90, z=0 (left)
7,8,9: x=0, y=180, z=0 (back)
10,11,12: x=0, y=270, z=0 (right)
13,14,15: x=90, y=0, z=0 (up)
Then when rendering the sequence, I start at frame 2 and step by 3. Or when rendering via pixelplow, render frames: 2,5,8,11,14.
Is there an easier way to do this? I'm new to Terragen 3, so maybe I'm missing an option somewhere?
You're probably getting odd results due to Motion Blur and offset settings. Look in the camera Blur tab. Even when Motion Blur is disabled in the render, the Position and Length settings have an effect. You probably want 0 blur length.
- Oshyan
You're right, setting blur length to 0 fixed the problem. I had motion blur disabled, and figured the motion-blur settings would be ignored. Thanks!
No problem, it's a common issue and I'm not quite sure the best way to solve the problem. It's due to the offset for motion blur, but it's something that is important to preserve for certain VFX-type workflows, even when blur is not being rendered (for example if blur is going to be applied in post using motion vectors).
- Oshyan