Where to find background images for reflections?

[simonm]

Hi all

 

Im constantly looking for background reflection images to use in my exterior still images.

For instance, i want the glass of the building in the main frame to reflect the surrounds behind the camera. I am looking for some flat panoramic urban images (houses/building etc) and was wondering if anyone had any good references they can point me to? I usually build my own backgrounds but it gets a bit tedious sometimes.

 

Thanks guys

[Scott Schroeder]

5 Threads down from this one......

 

http://forums.cgarchitect.com/77678-google-maps-street-view-your-3d-environment.html

[simonm]

Thanks Scott - that does work well, but i find the reflections seem to be a bit weird (like it looks out of scale/proportion). Unless im doing somehting wrong.

 

I was after a FLAT version of that that I can use on a plane in the background

 

5 Threads down from this one......

 

http://forums.cgarchitect.com/77678-google-maps-street-view-your-3d-environment.html

[M V]

There's a million - here are some the best ones in my opinion

 

http://www.cgtextures.com/

 

http://texturify.com/

 

http://noemotionhdrs.net/

 

http://www.viz-people.com/product-category/hdri-skies/skies/

[jasonstewart]

Thanks Scott - that does work well, but i find the reflections seem to be a bit weird (like it looks out of scale/proportion). Unless im doing somehting wrong.

 

I was after a FLAT version of that that I can use on a plane in the background

 

Those are spherical so they would have to be on a dome. You can alpha out the sky so you can use whatever sky you want. There are a number of free and paid software that will convert it to a vertical cross style mapping (box mapping basically) and then you can use the pieces you could put it on a box instead of a cylinder. You might be able to switch it to a cylinder mapping but IDK about that have never tried it.

[grzegorzwronkowski]

There are a lot of free Sky Backrounds, Spherical Environments and textures on sister site of hdrmaps.com, http://www.texturify.com, about which I have mentioned few months ago, but at that time there weren't much of free stuff. Now you can download everything there without registration. All textures, sky backgrounds, spherical environments are royality free. They can be also used in software like After Effects, Element 3D, Cinema 4D, for environment background. You can blur spherical background in software like Lys by Knald.