Rendering Panoramas

[philvanderloo]

I'm searching around for the best method for rendering 360 degree panoramas which can be played in quicktime viewer.

I'm in max design 2015/Vray 3.0

Ran across this tutorial which is pretty dated.

http://renderstuff.com/creating-virtual-360-panorama-cg-tutorial/

Now I'm wondering if the panorama exporter in 3ds max is the way to go.

If so, I know I need to use a standard camera, (as opposed to vray), and may need to change the color mapping multiplier to adjust the lighting, (correct me if I'm wrong).

So, am I on the right track or is there more I should know? Or, is there a better way?

I'm rendering architectural interiors.

Thank You.

[philvanderloo]

Since writing this post I dove into the panorama exporter a little deeper and, while rendering, everything looks fine in the render frame buffer view but the pano viewer stays black. The finished file is black. I saved as a .jpg, opened it in the viewer, and exported to quicktime format and it's all black.

[Bruce Hart]

Hi Phil

you can go to the Vray Camera roll-out and change the type of camera to spherical and the FOV override to 360. Make sure the camera is level in the scene, and set the render aspect to 2:1 (say 4000x2000 pixels). Open the resulting render in Pano2vr and export out. The standard Max panorama renders out 6 individual renders (cubic) and sticks them together. This could result in seams at the edge of each render, due to a slight difference in GI calculations on each image. When you use the 360 FOV method, you can do it all in one go, and it is easy to edit the resulting image in photoshop if necessary

[Nicolai Bongard]

There is a post on peter guthries blog about this aswell, and what Bruce says is pretty much the way to go!

[Amen]

Use a standard camera, but don't forget to use a vray camera under Environment and Effects > exposure control > choose Veay Exposure Control > Mode "from vray camera > Camera Node > pick a vray camera in your scene. + what Bruce said :-)

 

I would go for Kolor Panotour to make a tour. It is more or less a GUI on top of krpano (the best panorama program) and it works very well.

[philvanderloo]

Thanks everyone.

Bruce- max 2015 also has availability of a "spherical panorama" camera in addition to the "Spherical." I wonder if this would be a better choice.

[Amen]

What Bruce was talking about, was not a 3ds Max menu. You can find it under Render Setup > Vray > Vray :: Camera (That isVray 2.0, it might have changed...)

[philvanderloo]

Yes I knew that Jan. That is where the option for spherical panorama camera is. In the render setup under camera. There is spherical, and spherical panorama in max 2015. Just wondering which is best.

Thanks