The basic workflow I’ve used for this in the past is to convert the equirectangular panorama to a cubical projection. Then you can paint out the nadir (poles) on the top/bottom of the cube in PS/other to get rid of the distortion. You can use Pano2vr http://gardengnomesoftware.com/pano2vr.php for the conversion. After convert it back to equirectangular. Very similar to the Polar method mentioned before.
Hope that is what you were going for – just glanced and thought I would share this. Nicholas Breslow From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Nancy Jacobs Sent: Sunday, July 28, 2013 6:25 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: Environment sphere issues Thanks for this info, Stephen, but I really need the spherical environment for a seamless space experience. Now that I've got the implicit projection working, it does a better job rendering the image at the poles, but still not good enough. Guess ill have to drag a sphere into Mari and try painting out the distortion. That plugin you linked me to gives some cool vortex effects at the poles, maybe ill find a use for that! But I still wonder why it's working for your images and not mine. Maybe it's in the type of image and what is happening visually near the bottom and top of the image. On Jul 28, 2013, at 1:19 AM, Stephen Davidson <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: Here is a nice article on creating cubic environment maps from stitched panoramic photos, using Blender. very clever: http://www.aerotwist.com/tutorials/create-your-own-environment-maps/ On Sat, Jul 27, 2013 at 9:42 PM, Nancy Jacobs <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: Stephen, this plugin really didn't work for me. It way overdid some kind of smearing, spiraling algorithm. Looks a lot worse than the original. I wonder what he's thinking, or what went wrong here... Any ideas? Thanks for the link, however. I was really stoked when I thought it was going to solve this problem. Maybe something in Softimage mapping is trying to solve this and doesn't quite do it, so this plugin overcompensates? I still think implicit mapping would help, as the help files indicate, if I could get any image to show up on the sphere. Thanks again, Nancy On Jul 27, 2013, at 8:18 PM, Stephen Davidson <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: If you have Photoshop, here is a link to something called spherical mapping corrector: http://www.richardrosenman.com/software/downloads/ No 64 bit support, I believe. here is the install and use docs: Spherical Mapping Corrector - v1.4, © 2008 Richard Rosenman Advertising & Design. Release date: 03/15/03, Updated 09/28/08. INSTALLATION: Simply unzip "spheremap.zip" and copy "spheremap.8bf" to your "\Photoshop\Plug-Ins\" folder, or whichever plugin folder your host program uses. Load your program, open an image, go to the plugins menu and select the plugin. DESCRIPTION: This filter produces texture map correction for spherical mapping. When projecting a rectangular texture onto a sphere using traditional spherical mapping coordinates, distortion ('pinching') occurs at the poles where the texture must come to a point. Given the different topology of a plane and a sphere, it is impossible to avoid this, or any kind of distortion. However, by properly distorting the texture map, it is possible to minimize and even compensate for the polar distortion. Special thanks to Paul Bourke for allowing his algorithm to be ported to this plugin. For more information, please visit Mr. Bourke's site at http://astronomy.swin.edu.au/~pbourke/. Sub-Sampling: Specifies what type of pixel sub-sampling to use. (Nearest Neighbor being fastest, Bicubic being best. On Sat, Jul 27, 2013 at 6:46 PM, Nancy Jacobs <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: Greetings, I'm using the old-style environment spheres with an HDR image wrapped to light the scene, but invisible to rendering, and a beauty image visible to the render. The problem is the very visible distortion near the poles of the sphere. I need 360 degree visual acceptability. I am using a background which I've made seamless in both directions, a 2:1 rectangle. It seems this worked in renders at one point years ago in another software. Perhaps even XSI....I don't recall. I'm also trying to substitute this arrangement by using both an environment (using the HDRI), and 'Spherical Mapping' (using the beauty image), in the Pass Shaders. But I'm getting very strange results, so not sure if this is the way to go. Also, it's difficult to line them up properly so that the light in the HDRI is coming from the same place as the equivalent visible areas in the beauty image -- which of course one can do easily in the wrapped spheres. But in the pass shaders, they don't seem to use the same rotation systems... Any advice on getting an undistorted, seamless image going here? With proper orientations? Thanks, Nancy -- Best Regards, Stephen P. Davidson (954) 552-7956<tel:%28954%29%20552-7956> [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic - Arthur C. Clarke [cid:]<http://www.3danimationmagic.com/> -- Best Regards, Stephen P. Davidson (954) 552-7956 [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic - Arthur C. Clarke [http://www.3danimationmagic.com/3Danimation_magic_logo_sign.jpg]<http://www.3danimationmagic.com/>
