The camera/mirror sphere/HDRshop method can handle every advanced scene
illumination (should even work with V6 GI) but it's very laborious...
Mark
The "camera/mirror sphere/HDRshop method" ? I'd be guessing you
are talking about using RS to capture HDRi images , in the same
way one would do so , in real life ? However , it is just a guess .
100% correct!
The "very laborious" is also a bit of a mystery to me . Was
this method covered here and I missed it's journey into the void,
or is this considered to be 'common knowledge' , somehow ?
thanks in advance
garry
Here's a brief description:
- make a small analytical sphere with mirror material (just color=0 and
reflection=1)
- put a camera exactly underneath it and zoom in on the sphere
- put these in a level, and place it at a strategic position in the scene
and render. Make the camera Current if you render to a file.
I uploaded an example scene with such a setup:
http://www.athanor3d.com/pub/pano_volfog.zip
Next, the HDRShop part. I noticed that they went commercial, how about USD
400 for a single license and USD 16500 for a 100-seat license!
http://projects.ict.usc.edu/graphics/HDRShop/
Version 1 is still free however, for non-commercial use.
OK, here's the procedure:
- load a fisheye image rendered with the above method
- set Select->Draw Options to Circle
- draw a circle as accurately as possible around the sphere's edge
- crop the image (Image->Crop)
- Now the fun part: open the Image->Panorama->Panoramic Transformations
dialog
- Source image should be the loaded image, Format = Mirrored Ball
- click the Arbitrary Rotation button, then Settings: set X-axis to 90
degrees
- Destination image: new image, Format = Latitude/Longitude
- OK and save!
Now you have a similar projection to the UVimage evaluated one but with full
shading.
I applied an image generated this way in RS to view it
http://www.athanor3d.com/pub/OGLpanoviewer.zip
Higher quality can be achieved with higher resolutions, but the bottleneck
is the 1024 max OGL texture resolution, for rendering it can be much higher,
of course.
hope this helps,
Mark
