How to use a QTVR pan in an animation?

[pablo scapi]

Hello:

I have an animation to do and no much time to do it, so i was thinking that i could save a lot of render time if i put some pans made with a QTVR instead of render every frame of the pan.

How can this be done? witch software do i need?

I use 3d max, vray, and the creative suite of adobe. For the QTVR i really don´t remember, it has been some time since my last test at it, so if some one can sugest the work flow i would really apreciate it.

 

Thank you.

[Stephen Thomas]

The easiest way is to just place a standard max camera in your scene and position it where you want the start position of your QTVR to be. The focal length is irrelevant. In your render settings go to VRay: Camera then change it to spherical and override the FOV to 360°. Make sure your image output ratio is 2:1, this will render out an equirectangular image.

 

There are various programs that will convert this to a QTVR, I've used Pano2QTVR in the past but there may be others that are better.

[Stephen Thomas]

Another idea that I have used before is to render some high quality stills and have animated people walking through the scene. This gives the impression of animation without the long render times and you can even do a small pan or zoom camera move in post if the image is of sufficient resolution.

Edited January 14, 2010 by stef.thomas

[pablo scapi]

Hello:

Thank you for refreshing me that, i had done this in the past, but the main question i was asking is: Once you have the QTVR, how can i put it in the midle of an animation, this is as a wmv for example, so i can use is as a sequence for a pano of the room.

 

Thank you

[Stephen Thomas]

Ok, I was forgetting the animation part Really you don't want to be producing a QTVR at all then. You can use the equirectangular image in After Effects to get the panning effect you need. I can't remember exactly how to do this but we have definitely done this before.

 

Be warned though that it may be quite dizzying as it is basically just like spinning round on the spot so I would use it sparingly and keep the speed fairly low. A combination of zooms, horizontal or vertical pans and the spinning 360° could all be used though. Also you will have to render the 360° image out at a very high resolution in order for it to look sharp.

[Stephen Thomas]

Here you can see an animation we did using some of these techniques. The exterior sections are obviously proper animation but the interior shots were just stills as I described and the background of the 'hub' title is a spinning 360° image done in after effects like I mentioned. Might give you some ideas I hope.

 

http://www.blip.tv/file/2330350/

[pablo scapi]

Well done!!! thank you very much for the info and great movie you have done.

Now i just have to figure out how is done to actually pan the equirectangular photo in AE, but knowing it´s possible is the important part.

Those people you have put are great, wonder how did you do it, guess that in the interior shots are post produced right? Did you render the sequences first with the alfa chanel and just placed and move them in AE?

Thank you again.

[Stephen Thomas]

Well done!!! thank you very much for the info and great movie you have done.

Now i just have to figure out how is done to actually pan the equirectangular photo in AE, but knowing it´s possible is the important part.

Those people you have put are great, wonder how did you do it, guess that in the interior shots are post produced right? Did you render the sequences first with the alfa chanel and just placed and move them in AE?

Thank you again.

Thank you The people were animated bipeds from AXYZ which were placed in the scene in 3ds max, we just rendered them using the same camera as the still background as a seperate pass and composited them afterwards.

 

The interior sequences were supposed to be fully animated as well but so much work went into the vegetation etc for the exteriors that we were in danger of going over time and/or budget and the decision was made to go with still backgrounds and animated people. I think it was fairly successful.

 

I'm sure we used the Trapcode Horizon plugin for After Effects to import the panorama. You might be able to do it inside of 3ds Max though, just import your panorama, change the mapping type to screen and spherical projection. Then drag this map into your environment slot. You should be able to animate the rotation values in the map to get the movement you want, then just use the scanline renderer to output your frames. Should be pretty quick too.

Edited January 14, 2010 by stef.thomas