360 degree panorama

[Doofus]

Just thought I would share this with everyone.
I managed to get a pretty reasonable looking 360degree panorama out of TG2 last night.

The way i made this was to set the horizontal FOV to 10.
Then rendering in 5 degree increments, render out 72 thin vertical strips, which I then stitched together, half overlapping in photoshop.
With the overlaps I used a layer mask with a vignette to fade so that each strip fades into the next one.
There is a little visible banding but not too much for my purposes.
Hope someone finds this useful and any suggestions on how to improve this to make it easier to do or to lose the banding would be cool.
Cheers 

[oggyb]

Using 72 little strips might seem like a good idea at first, but then you're making it easy to introduce artefacts like the vignetting you mentioned.

I'd say use the same relative zoom level, but render in 5-8 blocks.  Blend them together with a brush on the layer mask instead of a gradient so you control what blurs through and what keeps its detail.  That way, it's less obvious where the renders join.

Good luck.
M.

[king_tiger_666]

photoshop does have a photomerge fuction which would have helped you make this... eg merging 2 renders together instead of 72

[Doofus]

oggyb - I found that when rendering in larger chunks for less renders I started to get problems with perspective and getting the top and the bottom of the strips to line up properly as well as things near and far away. This effect was minimised by using the small strips.
I will do some more trials and see if I can find a more efficient way.
Thanks

King_Tiger_666 - Not the first time I have spent ages doing something only to be told there is a button in photoshop that could have done it for me. LOL.
Photoshop just does so much that you could spend a lifetime figuring out everything that it does. Anyhoo, once I finally get a method locked down, I will write an action so it does all the strip combining, laying out, fading and combining automatically.

And that oggyb is the reason why I don't really want to blend the layers with a brush, but would like to do it with an automatic method as I plan on making lots of these for use as environment spheres in other 3D apps.

Thanks for the input though.
Back to the virtual drawing board.

[buchvecny]

lol i just dont know why u did that

[Doofus]

Like I said, to use as an environment sphere in other 3D apps.

Why is there like a really easy way that I am missing?

[oggyb]

Like I said, to use as an environment sphere in other 3D apps.

Why is there like a really easy way that I am missing?

Ah, I see.  So quality isn't your highest priority.  Well, I guess if you're on a 360-render production line having a button to do the job makes the whole thing more friendly!

One question. . . do they join up at the ends or hadn't you thought of that yet?

[Doofus]

Yes. It joins up seamlessly. I cut the first strip in half and put it to the far end of the image then faded it the same as all the other strips.
Quality would be nice, but it does need to be an efficient reusable method too.

[MeltingIce]

You could always render out 6 times in a cubic fashion with your FOV at 90, arrange the images in Photoshop into a Cross format, then use something like HDR Shop to convert the cross format to a longitudinal format.  It's what I did when I made skyboxes in Terragen 0.9.

[oggyb]

You could always render out 6 times in a cubic fashion with your FOV at 90, arrange the images in Photoshop into a Cross format, then use something like HDR Shop to convert the cross format to a longitudinal format.  It's what I did when I made skyboxes in Terragen 0.9.

I think the point about making a 4-face image was that the edges were too difficult to stitch together successfully.

M.

[Doofus]

Yes. You end up with obvious seams. i want seamless.

[DeanoD]

An automated system for this would be excellent..

much better then the 6 flat plates that is usualy used. I am very intersed in this myself. The main thing however is that you need to be able to run this script or action on a the 32bit open EXR image.. or a HDRI. Those types of images do not support layering. at least not in photoshop. One of my main atractions to TG2 is the possability to create HDR spheres from it of ultra realism to light my animations in 3ds Max. Also if it could be provided at a high enough res.. to be the background as well.. In order for that to work .HDR compatabilty is a must for your script. IMHO.

I am working on a system that may be better then the cube technique used thus far.. basicly instead of 4 sides it has 8. One at 0 one at 45,90 etc.. then you do the same thing at a 45degree canted up/down angle as well and a single image for virticle upwards and virticly downwards. However.. I cannot think of any way thus far of compiling these images into a usefull sphere map. AND it IS allot of rendering..

In conclusion..

Devs... Give us a proper sphere capturing camera.... pleeaaasseee And dont just have it capturing 6 flat images at 90deg.. as said before that does create seams.. that become painfully obvios in even slightly compressed animations.

[DeanoD]

Oh and btw I just put your little Sphere into a the 3DS max Panorama exporter viewer.. where you can look around in 3D and see what its like.. Looks very cool! The one issue with your technique for me is the pinching at the top and bottom. If you could get that cracked... Get it automated.. and make it 32bit compatable.. then you are onto a winner:P. I think you defo need to render a shot virticaly up and down to and some how intergrate that into the rest of the image in order to cure the pinching. Still Very promising!

[Doofus]

The one I rendered out before does need the sphere cutting off top and bottom in max and then a cylindrical mapping applying to it as it doesn't render through 180 degrees, but I will be changing that. That is to do with the proportions of the image that I rendered from TG2 I believe. I will try again when I get some more time. Bit busy what with Chrimbo and all.
You are right about the HDRI format being necessary, but at the moment I have no way of doing anything like layering the HDRI slices like I can with the normal images. I agree. Once we get a sphere capturing camera this will be amazing and it will probably be my main use for TG2 as most of what I do is done in Max.
Ideally I would render the terrains and skies in TG2, export terrains as 3ds models, use the renders mapped onto a sphere in max and import the terrain to use for shadow receiving and casting from any other objects that I put into the scene in max.
Not much to ask for eh

[Oshyan]

There are quite a lot of applications out there that do very good automated panorama stitching from an arbitrary number of images. I suggest using one of those, except I'm not sure if any support full 32bit/channel HDR images. Some maybe 16bit/channel, but I don't know beyond that. Of course Photoshop CS2 supports 32bit/channel images and has an ok stitching function so perhaps that could be used?

Some of the available tools:
http://stitcher.realviz.com/
http://webuser.hs-furtwangen.de/~dersch/
http://www.d-vw.com/D_Joiner/index.htm

- Oshyan