Creating 360 HDR from Maya scene

[sharktacos]

I have an interior scene that I would like to make into an HDR map. The goal is to have the generated HDR line up perfectly with the scene geo.

Rendering the HDR: The camera is set to Vray spherical cam with a 360 FOV. The camera is placed at the world origin (so right on the floor of the room) and the render size is 2:1. I render and save as EXR.

Applying the HDR in the scene: Next I read this HDR map into a dome light with the env map type set to "spherical".

The problem is when I look through a camera the geo in the scene does not line up with the HDR map. Not even close.

what am I doing wrong?

[bigbossfr]

I have an interior scene that I would like to make into an HDR map. The goal is to have the generated HDR line up perfectly with the scene geo.

Rendering the HDR: The camera is set to Vray spherical cam with a 360 FOV. The camera is placed at the world origin (so right on the floor of the room) and the render size is 2:1. I render and save as EXR.

Applying the HDR in the scene: Next I read this HDR map into a dome light with the env map type set to "spherical".

The problem is when I look through a camera the geo in the scene does not line up with the HDR map. Not even close.

what am I doing wrong?

You have to use the same camera and use the projection node (spherical) and it will be the same.

[sharktacos]

Perhaps you could clarify this a bit more? I am using the spherical mapping from the VrayPlaceEnvTex node. Is that what you mean by "the projection node"?

If I use the same camera to create the spherical HDR and also to render I can get it to line up in the viewport. However if I compare the reflections on a chrome ball in the scene, it still does not line up.

However, this will be for a film involving multiple shots with different cameras, often animated. It would not be feasible to create a new HDR for each camera, let alone new HDR maps for each frame of an animated camera. That would quickly become unmanageable.

Is there a better way to approach this? I was expecting to be able to render out 1 HDR that could be used for all the shot cams.

Here's two pics of a chrome ball in the scene showing the difference from the actual rendered reflections, and the HDR which does not line up properly. The difference is in the ceiling and far wall geo which are hidden in the second pic so it instead shows the HDR dome behind it. Note that it does not line up at all. The HDR was created with a camera 3cm above the world origin (having it at 0Y made the floor disappear so I needed to raise it a bit). I get a similar error in the reflections not lining up if I use the same camera to generate the HDR and render the frame, so that does not seem to address the issue here.

Any help greatly appreciated!

[bigbossfr]

1) Set an attribute to your camera to render in 360
2) Render
3) Create a Maya file node in 3D projection (node VRay node)
4) Set your projection node to perspective and link your previous camera
6) Load your previous render into the file node, render.

And voila.

[sharktacos]

Thanks. To clarify, when you say "node VRay node" what does this refer to? Do you mean a Vray PlaceEnvTex node? Perhaps you could post a pic of the network in the Hypershade?

[bigbossfr]

Thanks. To clarify, when you say "node VRay node" what does this refer to? Do you mean a Vray PlaceEnvTex node? Perhaps you could post a pic of the network in the Hypershade?

I would say "not VRay node". So this is a Maya node (Maya projection node, like a normal projection in Maya)

[isoparmesan]

Hey, were you ever able to get this to work? I ran into the same issue.

I think I'm missing a step in bigbossfr's method. when you say "3) Create a Maya file node in 3D projection (not VRay node)" do you mean that a 3D projection should be plugged into the 'dome tex' of the dome light? When I do that I don't see the environment map in the viewport, and it doesn't seem to pass the image info to the light (the dome lights swatch just shows grey, and the background renders as grey).