architectural visualizations? do you need skydome or just a background sky?

[johnnlo]

I always wondered if a skydome has any advantage instead of the regular background image in 3ds max.

 

just curious what other do.

 

thanks, cheers

[SgWRX]

i'm relatively new, but so far i've used several different things: a giant plane with a bitmap, the background environment, a bitmap in the haze slot of mr physical sky (with mental ray daylight) and a cylinder or half cylinder. the dome i haven't quite gotten a handle on mapping and such, probably b/c i use mostly flat sky photos. also, i've added the sky in post.

 

i think for animations, you'd want to use something that can cover the whole area of the camera's view. that might be very little or a full 360.

 

sometimes when i panic and need to drop a sky in, i go with the plane and a bitmap. however the angle of the sun can make that sky a little too dark so then i go to the haze slot in mr physical sky. when all else fails i go to post processing and dropping as sky in.

 

there's a good read here: http://www.cgarchitect.com/upclose/VI/default.asp week 13 on backgrounds.

[Tommy Burns]

Hi

 

There is a great tutorial on the 3DAS site it explains everything I was looking at it myself yesterday. http://www.cgarchitect.com/upclose/VI/Week13/A_Little_Background_Information.pdf

 

Tommy

[charter]

I use Vue 5 infinite to create my own custom sky dome textures, which i then import into max as a spherical HDR Image. Works really well, almost worth buying vue just for that!

[STRAT]

depends what your purpose is.

[danb4026]

I use Vue 5 infinite to create my own custoWm sky dome textures, which i then import into max as a spherical HDR Image. Works really well, almost worth buying vue just for that!

 

What is Vue 5 Infinite??

[charter]

Vue is a landscape and environment generation program and could probably be best described in the context of its integration with Max as flawed genius, i.e it works brilliantly in some respects but in others its a complete pain in the butt, you just have to figure out how best to apply it to your requirements.

 

I use it for making custom hdr skys as well as growing my own trees for photoshop and DIY RPC's

 

If my memory serves me right ILM have started useing VUE as part of their production pipeline and the background Matte work is vue in pirates of the caribbean 2.

 

The latest version is Vue 6 the web site is: e-onsoftware.com