360 View Plugin

[Michael J. Brown]

Does anyone know of a software (preferably a plugin for Max) that stiches together a 360 view of a scene (from a single vantage point)?

 

Perhaps there is even a Photoshop plugin that will do this.?.? But it must be completely seamless. Even when panning ones view up to the ceiling/sky or floor/grade.

 

I know I've seen/heard of this before. But I'm drawign a complete blank on what 3rd-party software it was.

 

Thanks.

[matthewgriswold]

Have you tried the native Panorama Exporter, under the Utilities Tab?

[Michael J. Brown]

Nope. First I've heard of it (i'm ashamed to say).

 

I'll give it a try.

 

Thanks

[Scott Schroeder]

Mental Ray also has a panorama exporter if you are using it. Just apply the shader to the camera in the settings and render away.

 

Vray can do it as well. Here's a link to how to create one out of Vray using the spherical camera: http://renderstuff.com/creating-virtual-360-panorama-cg-tutorial/ Note, the good part about how to do it is towards the bottom of the article.

[Michael J. Brown]

DISCO!

 

That's exactly what i'm looking for.

 

Thanks, Scott.

[Justin Hunt]

The panorama exported only works in 32bit max, you can render them in 64bit max but you can save the .mov file out.

 

jhv

[Michael J. Brown]

The panorama exported only works in 32bit max, you can render them in 64bit max but you can save the .mov file out.

 

jhv

 

 

Oh, that's not good. Why is that?

[Scott Schroeder]

Oh, that's not good. Why is that?

 

It's due to Max's 64-bit lack of codec support, which I've never fully understood why it is so bad. As long as you render out the spherical cams in either mental ray or vray, you are fine. The spherical cams are simply images and the plug-in in my link above translates them into cube maps.

 

The Max pano exporter is pretty low quality anyways. This is a quote from the link in the comments when someone asked why not just use the max pano exporter:

Surely you can create the panorama using the Panorama Exporter utility.

Note that the Panorama Exporter is a integrated base 3ds Max function and it initially designed for work with the standard 3ds Max camera only and can't work with VRayPhysicalCamera. Thus, it doesn't positively differ from the way described in the tutorial for creating virtual 360 panoramas.

 

But the Panorama Exporter way has a list of disadvantages because of it's process of work, at which it renders six sides (font, right, back, left, bottom, top) views and automatically stitches them to a spherical (equirectangular) projection after that.

 

Firstly, this like process makes the correction of the rendering very hard. For example when you want to re-render some region of the image using the function of region rendering of the closest bucket found to the mouse pointer (with mouse in a V-Ray frame buffer). So, if you need to re-render something little, you can't just use this tool and you will have to wait until all the sides are rendered and stitched together. In the result the making local corrections becomes insufferable.

 

Secondly, this way makes impossible the creating and saving to a HDD the panoramic GI maps (light cache, Irradiance map) for their further using by loading from file, what especially actual when making the panoramas of a very high resolution. The calculation of those takes many hours even using distributed rendering technology with a multiple computers.

 

Thirdly, 3ds Max Panorama Exporter utility creates very blurred and poor equirectangular projections and thus they can be used as a rough preview only.

 

Stue, we advice you and everyone not to use the 3ds Max Panorama Exporter utility. Use the technology described in a tutorial that has not the above-listed flaws and you will have great interactive renderings.

[Justin Hunt]

It's not autdesk that is not supporting 64bit quicktime export, it is apple that isn't supporting 64bit quicktime export.

 

So far that plugin has been the best option I've seen, more for the compiling the pano's for distribution than anything else.

 

jhv

[TSuess]

Wait. Did I miss the part where a plugin was suggested? So far I've found this: http://www.immervision.com/en/multimedia/multimedia_products/Tools/multimedia_products_tools_0.php

 

and this:

http://www.easypano.com/panorama2flash.html

 

Obviously the best solution creates a file that can be embedded in a web-site. Are there any free applications that can handle this?