Rendered viewport with visible spherical environment experiment

[Micha_cg]

Hi, I tested, how good a map at an environment sphere match with the Vray environment - it works perfect. I hope Rhino will support a viewport spherical environment and post my experiment+wish here.

[Paraglobal]

Re: Rendered viewport with visible spherical environment experiment

Hi Micha

Great I love the result it's really foto real.
I just installed your toolbar,very nice.

Can you show me tow you aligh the image with the 3d?
Your image is very good,do you have a ground for the shadows of the 3d model?

Some tips will be more than willcome.

Thanks
Sérgio Silva

[Micha_cg]

Re: Rendered viewport with visible spherical environment experiment

I upload the scene at my server, but without env texture. The env texture is from http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/equirectangular/

http://www.simulacrum.de/download/En...ewportTest.3dm

You must update the texture path of the ground and the environments. Also the "sun" light must be adjusted for the LDR env image. Also you must set a transparency map for the ground.

http://i8.photobucket.com/albums/a46...ableground.png

Good luck.

[Paraglobal]

Re: Rendered viewport with visible spherical environment experiment

Thanks Micha

I'm starting to understand how to do it but how did you align the base
texture so that the sand would match witht the scand in the background?

thanks
Sergio

[Micha_cg]

Re: Rendered viewport with visible spherical environment experiment

It's very simple: all textures based on the env map. I use the Vray environment mapping of the texture options only. Look at the the material in the file.
Unbeliveable, but true, you can turn the view and anything match allways - ground, background and environment - it's all the same environment mapping. ;D

[bliker_cg]

Re: Rendered viewport with visible spherical environment experiment

Hi Micha.. and what to do if you want a sharp shadow? : Do you have to modify the transparency map, don't you? and if you do that you'll get a darker area where the object is, isn't it?

(btw/ I'm doing it from scratch with Rhino 3, so maybe these questions have no sense at all)

[Micha_cg]

Re: Rendered viewport with visible spherical environment experiment

Sharp shadow -> use an other light source than a rect light. The transparency map helps to get a smooth transition from ground plane material to the background env.
This experiment should work with Rhino 3 too.

[bliker_cg]

Re: Rendered viewport with visible spherical environment experiment

Well, about the light, I'm doing it using the same rect light but smaller.
What I'm doing is rendering a top view and making a transparency map from the shadow I get in this render to get a completly hard shadow and a smooth transition with the ground map, without seeing darker areas because of the transparency map.
...still doing it, I'll post my results :-\

[Paraglobal]

Re: Rendered viewport with visible spherical environment experiment

One more question Micha

Does the size of the equirectangular photo matters for the size of the sphere ??
I guess so or else I will have a low quality background no??

thanks
Sergio

[wlse3]

Re: Rendered viewport with visible spherical environment experiment

a pretty maneuver,thank you for your reply.how can you do it.

[bliker_cg]

Re: Rendered viewport with visible spherical environment experiment

...one more question would be what to do if you want to render more than one object? (one would be the one who is in front of the camera and the other one far away for example).

[Micha_cg]

Re: Rendered viewport with visible spherical environment experiment

@bliker: the shadow hardness is controlled by the lightsource only. Use a distant light, and you get a hard shadow.

@Sergio: the size of the image determinate how detailed the background is. The sphere size dosn't matter. I think, you can place objects in every distance.

[drybarr]

Re: Rendered viewport with visible spherical environment experiment

Micha,
I seem to have problems with this test. After setting all the correct textures and path this is what I get. I tried to include as much info as I could in the screenshot:


why does my ground and background come out all black?

Next thing I have hidden the sphere and the background renders, but the ground is not ok. With clipmap = no shadow, no clipmap = different lighting obviosly. The clipmap doesnt even seem to have any effect at all, almost as if it was all black. You can howver see that it has effect in the material preview window in the previous screenshot.



Im still using evaluation copy if that matters.

[Micha_cg]

Re: Rendered viewport with visible spherical environment experiment

Short some hints:

- the env sphere is for viewport use only and must be hidden for rendering
- the look of the ground is deteminated by the env texture and the additional light sources. At my example the env texture gave me to much blue, so I add the warm sun. The relation between sun and LDRI env must be fine adjusted.

[bdcali_cg]

Re: Rendered viewport with visible spherical environment experiment

I'm trying to pull this off in Rhino v3, so I can't see the example file, but how are you making the environment image appear in the non-rendered viewport? I'm assuming a sphere around the scene with an bitmap applied to the Environment slot... but when I do this the image only appears on the outside of the sphere and renders completely different than it appears - (Environment vs. Texture). What am I doing wrong? My tests work fine, once rendered with Vray, but I can't see the image in the viewport for context / placement.