panorama question - now urgent

[Dave Buckley]

i have asked something very similiar before but never got a definitive answer

 

i have an interior scene in max, i can quite comfortably render out a high quality still image and/or animation

 

however i want my result to be a virtual tour like that whichc an be found here, all i am interested in is the top right bit

 

http://www.virtualemotion.com/vt/giorgioolivieri/go2.html

 

how do i get from my max scene to this???

 

what do i need to render out??? images??? panorma exporter??? do i need to put a camera lens shader to give me a spherical output????

 

i also want the quality to be as good as my still images usually are

 

i am looking at using either autodesk stitcher or easy pano

 

the reason i am doing this is because the company i am doing the work for originally asked for stills/animation but then suggested it would be a good idea if we could just look around the room

 

could anyone get in contact with me PM or email or MSN and help me out with this, its kind of urgent, i've tried to put a camera in the middle of the room and render out 4 images but i then miss holes in the ceiling etc. i just need to know what to render out and how, formats, types etc, i should be fine once in the other software its just the getting out of max bit with the right resources

[JonRashid]

If your working in Max its very straightforward. Place your camera in the centre of the room. Then go to the utilities panel and look for your panorama exporter. Job done. Your cxlient will need quicktime. Also go for a lot higher resolution than you initially think.

[JonRashid]

Sorry missed a step. In the panorama viewer save as a quicktime vr

[whaling]

also, if you need to do photoshop on the image first, save it out from the viewer as an image file and after photoshopping use Pano2QTVR (gardengnomesoftware.com) which is a free program, to create the QT movie from the image... you could also buy Pano2VTR from the same site and use it to make a flash movie instead of a QT movie, which I think is what the site you linked to is using.

 

Using Pano2QTVR also gives you more control over the movie window size and other parameters. I think the image height needs to be about 3 times the height of the movie you want to create.

 

HTH

(my first post!!)

[erickdt]

A few things: If you're using MAX64 you will not be able to export a vitual quicktime file (QTVR) because there is no Quicktime 64 bit. Even though you can have 32 bit Quicktime on your 64 bit machine it does not work with 64 bit MAX for some reason (or really work at all for that matter). I'm lucky enough to have a copy of MAX 2009 32 bit in the office which works fine although I cannot view the final QTVR file on my computer. I have to go and look at it on someone elses.

 

Anyhow, one way you can do QTVR with VRay is to render out a view with the VRay camera with 360 degrees of view (fisheye lens). You can then save out that image and use it as a spherical enviroment map in an otherwise empty MAX file. Throw a camera in there, go to utilities, panorama exporter, it will do its thing and then you're done (again, this will not work in 64 bit MAX). The benefit of doing it this way is that you have total control over your panarama (because you can photoshop your enviroment map) and it renders wicked fast.

[danb4026]

There is no option to save as a QTVR. The closest thing I see is to save a quicktime .mov file.

 

Is there something special needed to have the option to save as a QTVR? Or is it the "export quicktime vr" option from the viewer?

Edited January 25, 2009 by danb4026
add

[erickdt]

Or is it the "export quicktime vr" option from the viewer?

 

yes.

[Dave Buckley]

guys you help is much appreciated, however, would i need to think about camera lens etc still, or is it just a case of sticking a camera in the scene, and how much does it make a difference if the camera isn't central (i'm guessing just get it as central as possible.

 

also on the vray side of things, how do i get the fisheye lens on there

[erickdt]

You'll want to place your camera wherever in the scene that you want to be your viewpoint. You do this by creating a camera wherever in the scene you want. You then go into the VRay camera rollout in the rendering setup dialogue and set your lens to "cylindrical point". Click the check box that says "over-ride FOV" and set the FOV to 360 degrees. Go to the camera view in your viewport and hit render. Once you're done rendering save that image. Now start a new instance of MAX. In the enviroment rollout set the enviroment map to the image that you just rendered out. Once you've done that you can drag that map into that material editor and set it as a spherical environ. You can now put a camera in your scene anywhere. Go to utilities, panorama exporter, then hit render. Save your file as QTVR. Boom you're done.

 

You should note: that for whatever reason, everything in the file you're using to export your QTVR file will render backwards. You can fix this by flipping your enviroment map (the image you originally rendered with you 360 degree lens) in Photoshop and by rotating your camera 360 degrees in your scene. You'll understand what I'm saying better when you actually do this process.

[Dave Buckley]

unfortunately, the 360 degree override did not work, i'm wondering if its because i rendered through a camera which was originally a standard cam and then converted to a vray cam via lele's script pack

[erickdt]

Only one way to find out :-p

[Dave Buckley]

nope still doesn't seem to be working, i must be missing something

 

any chance you could send me an example file, just a box to represent room, camera and correct settings?

[Dave Buckley]

doesn't appear to work with any vray cameras

just standard

[Nic H]

only works with standard camera afaik

[Dave Buckley]

yeh i figured, shame tho really because i usually use physical cameras with correct exposure etc, so my whole lighting methods are screwed up now if i want to convert existing scenes into panoramas, i like to use sun and sky with default intensity values

[Nic H]

oops sorry just read your post that it doenst work...

maybe try over at chaosgroup

[whaling]

if you dont mind a bit of hassle then you can use vray cameras. I did it by setting up six cameras, rendering them out and then stitching them together in Pano2QTVR.

 

The cameras need to be located at the same coordinates and face outwards to render 6 sides of a cube. By trial and error I found that the order of the images to be stitched had to be N E S W Up and then Down.

 

To make the renders cover the cube exactly, I used a film gate of 36mm, and a focal length 17.84mm (no idea why the strange number but that's what made the camera gizmos in the viewport just touch each other). The result was a perfectly stitched panoramic...

 

mltools also make a very handy panorama plugin, but I don't know that it works with vray cameras

[Dave Buckley]

i'm just using standard cameras now and putting the spherical image into pano2qtvr, working perfectly, i suppose i can adapt my lighting (because i'm such a versatile artist

[SandmanNinja]

Here are my notes - if you have already sorted this, then never mind.

 

SPHERICAL TO QTVR SETUP STEPS

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

1. Extract files to HD for panocube http://www.panoshow.com/panocube/PC00292.zip

 

2. Extract files to HD for panotools http://www.all-in-one.ee/~dersch/PanoTools.zip

 

3. Copy pano12.dll from panoTools folder, to \\windows\system folder

 

4. Drag PTStitcher.exe from panoTools\Helpers onto Panocube.exe

 

5. Render image from vray using spherical camera, over-ride FOV to 360, and image size 2x wide : 1x height

 

6. Drag rendered image file onto panocube.exe

The source image must reside in the same folder with panocube.exe when you drop it onto the .exe

 

7. You can customize the output file by editing script.txt in the panocube folder.

 

8. The output file will show up when completed in your panocube folder along with an html file which loads the QTVR.

(the html option can be disabled in the script.txt)

[Dave Buckley]

yeh couldn't get that panocube to work, it kept returning an error saying can't find C:\\Documents.

 

SOrted now anyway and looking good, i also managed to get a QTVR done with Autodesk stitcher, its really easy to use and has some neat publishing tools

[SandmanNinja]

yup - that's right.

 

It's DOS - OLD.... Oooollllddd..

 

I keep mine in a folder called "panocube" off the root of c: drive.

 

It doesn't understand spaces in file names OR file names longer than 8 characters.

And in DOS lingo, a folder is just a special file.

 

So - Do Not put it in your My Documents area.

Move it to the root of your C:\ and keep the name short.

 

If that was the problem, then that will fix it.