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On the Spherical Camera again...

timlobettimlobet Posts: 10
in Bryce Discussion

Hi all,

I have another request which someone might be able to help me with. Talking to another Bryce animator recently who was very helpful and suggested that for still shots 4000 x 2000 for VR was fine but the spherical camera needs to be modified or resized for animations which work better at 4000x2250 or 16:9.

I can see the spherical camera defaults to  X 1.199, Y 0.89, Z 1.199 but I cant see the relationship between 2:1, the default, in order to make a guess at how to resize it for the new resolution. I cant seem to get back in touch with him again so I wondered if anyone here might have any ideas?

Also, I usually set up the way David Brinnen suggests with perspective camera at 0,0,0 facing North, then create spherical camera, set to 0,0,0 and link to P camera. I still get the contractions at the poles and was wondering if I am setting up the camera incorrectly. After the scene is setup I render at 4000 x 2000 360 panorama, default AA, raydepth of 6.

Any thought on either of these two problems gratefully received.

BW

Comments

  • HoroHoro Posts: 10,634

    timlobet - the spherical mapping mode, also called equirectangular, asks for a 2:1 aspect ratio. It can be mapped on a sphere - a world map is a flat representation of the globe and also here the parts towards the poles get more and more compressed.

    A render made with the Spherical Mapper is not directly useful. You have to save it first - as normal picture or as HDRI. A normal picture must be mapped onto a big sphere, spherical mapped, and the camera inside this sphere. Note that left and right are swapped because the picture is mapped on the outside of the sphere, but the camera is on the inside of it. If you saved the image as HDRI, you can use it in the Sky Lab, IBL tab, as background. In this case, the camera is also inside a huge sphere, but it is automatically adjusted to display correctly.

    I hope this helps, else do not hesitate to ask more questions.

     

  • timlobettimlobet Posts: 10

    Thanks Horo,

    As I understand it,please correct me if I have it wrong, to use the image as HDRI I have to save only as 1:1. Wont I lose a lot of the image when I put it into the IBL to use as sky map?

  • HoroHoro Posts: 10,634

    What do you mean with 1:1? The aspect ratio for the HDRI needs to be 2:1, double as wide as high, e.g. 4000 x 2000 px.

  • timlobettimlobet Posts: 10

    Sorry, watching David's videos I thought to save an HDMI to put back as a sky background it had to be saved as square. I have never tried as 2:1. Blend with sky?

  • HoroHoro Posts: 10,634

    It occurred to me that you referred to 1:1 because of the thumbnail in the Sky Lab as the HDRI is shown. It is squeezed but only for the thumbnail. This square aspect ratio is a left over from Bryce 6 where we had the HDRI as Angular Map (still possible) but not yet spherical. Load your 2:1 HDRI and you see all of it but squeezed to 1:1. Again, this is only the preview.
    You can use any of the three options: Blend into background, Blend with sky and Add to sky.
    If you use Blend with sky, the HDRI backdrop is added to the sky, usually you make the sky fully black if you use this option (David uses this option mainly).
    Blend with sky puts the HDRI over the sky and with Transparency you control how much of the HDRI is visible over the sky, 0 means HDRI only, 100 means sky only (I use this mostly).
    Blend into background works the other way around, the HDRI is behind the sky  and if you move Transparency towards 100, only the HDRI is shown.
    For all you can Use sky color to bring in the sky color. Be aware that each time you select one of the 3 options above, this gets deselected and you have to select it anew.

  • timlobettimlobet Posts: 10

    ok, thats great Horo thanks so much, food for thought. I'll try this out tomorrow,. PM now in UK will report back , thanks so much. BW

  • timlobettimlobet Posts: 10

    Hi Horo, just thought I wouls get back to you. Thanks very much, your ideas helped a lot. I understand now if you are saving an HDR inside Bryce you need to save as a 1:1 but you can insert an HDR from outside as well.

    I have been taking some equirectangular 4000x2000 and even higher, up to 12000x6000 then using https://convertio.co/ to convert from jpg to hdr, ( I know its not true hdr but it works) and then putting into the IBL as HDR.

    Its works very well and the depth and clarity is much better than the other ways I tried. The render time is better as well, althought a 10 second animation at 4000x2000 still gives an avi. file size north of 3gb. I reduce this using quality settings in Handbrake to give 200-300mb.

    Thanks again, here's a rough sketch of David's Spooky Woods idea. Best viewed in a VR headset but PT gui viewer will give you an idea.

    Spooky woods_3.jpg
    4000 x 2000 - 2M
  • HoroHoro Posts: 10,634

    Thank you for reporting back timlobet, well done Spooky Woods panorama.

  • NGartplayNGartplay Posts: 3,109

    That's a great scene and definitely spooky.  It would fit nicely into our 'Is Anyone Game 2?' thread.  It looks just like what the challenge was about.

  • HansmarHansmar Posts: 2,927

    Great spooky panorama, timlobet!

  • adbcadbc Posts: 3,115

    timlobet : beautiful spooky scene.

  • mermaid010mermaid010 Posts: 5,483

    timlobet - very nice spooky scene, I like the texture in the foreground, or is that the effect of the shadows, looks so cool.

  • timlobettimlobet Posts: 10

    Thank you all for your kind words, I enjoyed playing withat tutorial. I want to try one of David's abstracts next.

     

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