I’ve got a project that requires 360 degree spherical panorama renders. I’ve read that the VRay for C4D camera can, but was hoping not to have to spend $800 to achieve this.
I’m attaching a sample of what I’m trying to achieve in a render.
I get your question as - how to use a panorama in a rendering (edit- how to render such a panorama is the question, so skip the next post as well /edit)
Put it on a Sphere or a Sky-Object, and set if needed the Projection to spherical. As I ahve no idea how the panorama was created, perhaps the U tile needs to be set to “-1”.
That is in a nutshell all there is to it. (If you use a sphere, you might like to place this into the Luminance channel and switch all other channels just off.
Set the camera in the middle point of the sphere and rotate the camera. This is the point where everything matches the original capture camera.
All the best
Sassi
The file is without your texture, replace it. Set the U tile to -1 if needed.
In the old days (‘90s) I used to project these spherical maps back on a cube like geometry. This saved a lot of time and in conjunction with some other methods I was even able to deliver with a slow cpu 20 minutes of animation in a single month, all in SD of course.
I have set up a rough project in that way. If you know the floor-camera-ceiling measurements, you can set up these easily. I have some assumptions (by eye, not by numbers) here.
If the floor and the ceiling is set, the walls can move in from each side until they fit the edge. Based on the spherical projection, this is like camera-projection, but 360º/180º.
With that method the camera is not limited to the origin of the capture camera anymore. Again, this is a rough example, the windows might give it away. But I guess you get the point.
The camera animation is pretty free with this method, as is the option to use this for Global Illumination. If used for GI on a sphere, the distance is always the same and in that way, just not correct.
Thank you for the prompt reply. Actually, I am going to create a room that has a lot of furnishings in it and windows, etc. The camera will be in the center of the room. I need to supply a single spherical panoramic render to the client which they are going to use for their WebGL page. So the finished render that I will need to supply them is the spherical render I posted earlier.
The other option is if there is a way to convert the QTVR .mov file that C4D can render and have it converted into an equirectangular image. But, I’m not having much luck in finding a QTVR converter so far.
Still, I would prefer to render a equirectangular (spherical panorama) image so I can control the resolution, etc.
Sorry, I might have misunderstood you. You would like to have a rendering like the image above, and not a rendering with such a projection.
The QTVR has two options and one delivers that format. But it is rather limited, as it is only 8bit/c, if you like to color correct this it might be limited. Very camera dependent.
If I have the need for such an 360º/180º, I place a tiny sphere in that center and make it 100% reflective, then bake the texture. Only reflective, and not using the camera. I like to use here the Hexahedron sphere for that, but the standard works as well, with a lot of segments to get a god result. The pol-caps need sometimes some care, which I repair with a plug in from FlamingPear.com (Flexify2) which works even in 32bit/c float. This procedural works since long nicely for me.
That sounds like an interesting suggestion. I’ve added a 100% reflective sphere into the center of my scene and got rid of my camera. I apologize that my familiarity with Cinema 4D is a little lacking, but I’m not sure what to do next to get the rendered image I need.
If I surmise the technique correctly, I would bake the texture onto the reflective sphere and save it as a texture map? Which I can then export out and open it up in a program like Photoshop? If this is the process, I would greatly appreciate any steps on how to do this as I’ve never baked a texture before.
Nevermind. I found the tag to Bake the texture and was successful in rendering out the image. This looks like it’ll work very nicely and I’m going to play around with the settings.
Thank you so much for helping me out with this technique.
The camera can stay in the scene. Inside of the Bake Texture Tag there is an option to use camera vector i.e., position/view for the reflections, which would not give you what you need. Have a look into the screen-shot.
Make certain that the texture of the sphere is set to “Spherical”, to get a nice result. To clean out the pol-caps use the Flexify2 (Flamingpear.com) Let me know if there is a question.
All of that is part of some new series, on which I’m working on. There was another “photo” question today, so it sounds the theme makes some sense ;o)
A complete set up, just change the size of the texture in the “Bake” tag, and perhaps the bit depth, not to forget the save/name field. To get the pole-caps without big care, the segments need to be set very high in number.
You’re welcome. Nice that it works for your project. Let me know if there is anything else :o)
(BTW: Those panoramas were one of the key-features in faking reflections in the “pre”-raytrace time. Even today you can accelerate certain scenes, when those “panos” are placed in the Environment channel in the material. In this way, they look like objects with reflection, but it is a simulation and a very fast one.)
Wow, neat technique. I am going to try to make biological scenes in Cinema that I can view with Occulus Rift. Hopefully this will work for it. Any tips on rending this as a movie? I will try it, Thanks.
Thanks so much - I am on your site already. Among other things, what I also hope to find is a way to render a panoramic movie, ultimately I need an mp4. At the moment, I am using your technique to render my animated scene where you are inside the cell as it explodes as a PNG sequence, 30fps.
