simple background/ground

[EdwardBrian]

Hey everyone, I'm wondering if there is a really simple way to make a 360 degree background. I have a 360 degree panoramic picture and I was thinking of projecting it onto a sphere (from inside the sphere). Would this work with reflections on objects inside the sphere? Would anyone have a simple example of how to do this? Also if I want to make a ground plane extend out from the middle of the sphere to the 'horizon' but I did not want it uniform - what would be the best way of doing it? Any help is appreciated.

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Edited February 28, 2011 by EdwardBrian

[old school]

I'm wondering if there is a really simple way to make a 360 degree background.

The Mantra Camera has several view types. Use the Polar Panoramic option to render a spherical image of your scene that you can then use as an hdri environment image.

See the Attached file grid_lights_pano_v001.hip for an example.

Heads Up. Only the rt and pbr render engines support the rendering of polar and cylindrical camera images.

I have a 360 degree panoramic picture and I was thinking of projecting it onto a sphere (from inside the sphere). Would this work with reflections on objects inside the sphere? Would anyone have a simple example of how to do this?

Yes this will work. Depends on the render engine you choose.

If you use mp/rt then you need to assign a material to your objects that reflect this sphere that is texture mapped. Instead of using an actual sphere, in each of the shaders that you want to reflect the env map, in the reflection tab on the Mantra Surface there is a Tab for Environment map. Best to use that for mp/rt. pbr ignores env maps on shaders btw.

With pbr, you need to up the diffuse limit to 2 or more to pick up bounce light from the env sphere.

With all render engines, it is best to use an Environment Light to light your scene. Gives you less noise in the final render.

Also if I want to make a ground plane extend out from the middle of the sphere to the 'horizon' but I did not want it uniform - what would be the best way of doing it? Any help is appreciated.

What do you mean by not uniform?

Do you mean you want the rendered sphere to have a bit of a wavy horizon line reflection? That is a property of how the sphere reflects the scene. Several ways to do this. Easiest is to add surface normals to the rendered geometry and ever so slightly perturb them or perturb the surface normals in the shader by adding just a tiny amount of noise at the right frequency.

grid_lights_pano_v001.hip