Dome Camera Output - how to map in new scene?

[elyptic]

Hi, I've been trying to capture my own synthetic HDRI from inside 3dsmax.

I rendered out a bunch of frames using the VrayDomeCamera pointing straight up in my scene from 0,0,0. Captured the whole 180 degree FOV, and rendered into HDR format.

My problem is, how do I re-map this onto a dome light in a new scene? Non of the mapping formats want to match up with the Dome camera's output.

For example, here is one frame of the output of my VrayDomeCamera (shrunk down to reasonable size for reference only):



Is it worth it to finish off this render (1440 frames) or should I change the camera to something else in order to capture the scene seamlessly?

Thanks,
Chris

[Morne]

Use a normal physical camera, then in render settings, v-ray tab > camera > type: spherical > override FOV > 360
Then set the size of the render 2:1 aspect ratio. That is, width twice as much as height. For example 16000 X 8000 will give you a nice res for the average HDRI

EDIT: Also, instead of pointing camera up, point it straight forward

[elyptic]

Thanks Morne that's pretty much what I ended up doing, except still using the dome camera rotated 90 degrees to be parallel with the ground plane.