Skybox rendering tutorial?

WsCG

Hello,
Posting here as a last resort.. I'm trying to track down a tutorial on how to create skybox textures using Bryce3D. So, the 6 separate images you'd apply for a video game background, etc.

I could have sworn I'd seen at least one or two in the past on YouTube, but I can't find them now. None of the search terms I try bring anything up. I know it requires an orthographic camera rotated in each cardinal direction, up and down... but I can't remember the exact steps.

Anyone know of any such tutorrials they could point me to?

Thank you much for any help!

Horo

WsCG - you can render as 360° Panoramic Projection but it will only be a cylindrical panorama. You can render the 6 sides of a cube by setting the camera FOV to 112.5° with Scale 100 or FOV 90° with Scale 72.5. You need an additional program to assemble the 6 sides to a spherical panorama. With Bryce 7.1 came 4 tutorials with different methods but they still need an additional program to assemble them (HDRShop which is not available anymore, Picturenut is free, Pano2VR is not free). With the "Bryce 7 Pro Spherical Mapper" (this is a special lens to be put in front of the camera) from Daz 3D you can render an spherical panorama directly. You may also look at this PDF on my website: Bryce & 3D CG Documents > Mine > IBL-HDRI > Panoramic Background.

EDIT: You can also have a look at https://www.bryce-tutorials.info/ which has probably the most complete list to Bryce video tutorials.

markusmatern

Another free option for stitching the six cubeface images into a complete 360° image is Hugin

It is specialised on creating panoramas of all sorts.

WsCG

Horo said:

WsCG - you can render as 360° Panoramic Projection but it will only be a cylindrical panorama. You can render the 6 sides of a cube by setting the camera FOV to 112.5° with Scale 100 or FOV 90° with Scale 72.5. You need an additional program to assemble the 6 sides to a spherical panorama. With Bryce 7.1 came 4 tutorials with different methods but they still need an additional program to assemble them (HDRShop which is not available anymore, Picturenut is free, Pano2VR is not free). With the "Bryce 7 Pro Spherical Mapper" (this is a special lens to be put in front of the camera) from Daz 3D you can render an spherical panorama directly. You may also look at this PDF on my website: Bryce & 3D CG Documents > Mine > IBL-HDRI > Panoramic Background.

EDIT: You can also have a look at https://www.bryce-tutorials.info/ which has probably the most complete list to Bryce video tutorials.

Hello, Horo, and Thanks :)

Luckily, no additional software would be required. Just the 6 separate images for each side. At least in this case, the image for each side is assigned individually, in the game engine's editor. If I were rendering out a skysphere, that'd be a different ball of wax.

Been looking into it more since I wrote that first post, and it looks like the SkyLab is going to be very helpful in creating the effect(s) I'm after. Just need to learn to wrangle the thing lol. I tried following a vid tutorial by David Brinnen, but he moves a bit too fast for me to follow - had to rewind 5 or 6 times for every step and was getting lost in it all. He does say it's intermediate level, to be fair... and I'm still very much a beginner. I have a feeling learning the skylab is going to be far more difficult than rendering out the skybox images.

Ah well... nothing wortwhile is ever easy, eh? 

Thanks again!

 

Horo

Good that I could help. I forgot to mention that if you only want a sky, you can create it in the Sky Lab, IBL Tab. Click on Use Sky, then Export Image, select file type, format and Type Spherical or Cross.
And yes, markusmatern is right about Hugin.

WsCG

Horo said:

Good that I could help. I forgot to mention that if you only want a sky, you can create it in the Sky Lab, IBL Tab. Click on Use Sky, then Export Image, select file type, format and Type Spherical or Cross.
And yes, markusmatern is right about Hugin.

 

Good info!
I'll have to use the individual texture approach, rotating the camera, etc. I intend to put objects in the scene as part of the skybox, so just exporting the sky alone wouldn't work.
I'm figuring out how to get it working currently. 

Thanks!