Background Centred on Camera Focal Point

[Jackson_cg]

Even if VfSU V.2 supports 2D backgrounds (so a single photograph can be used as a background) it'd be nice to be able to insert a 360° spherical background (as you can now), but to have a check box so the background doesn't rotate with the camera. Sure, once true 2D backgrounds are supported I could just edit out a section of the 360° background in Photoshop, but I'm lazy!

[dalomar_cg]

Re: Background Centred on Camera Focal Point

...have a check box so the background doesn't rotate with the camera.

Ummm...The background image should NOT move with the camera. Each mapping orientation has a specific way that its mapped that doesn't depend on camera position...

[Jackson_cg]

Re: Background Centred on Camera Focal Point

I meant that the 360° spherical background moves in relation to the camera (or to be more technically correct, the background is static while the camera moves in relation to it). While this is useful 95% of the time (and of course is absolutely necessary for animations) it'd be nice to be able to untick a check box or two, which would "fix" the background's X or Y position in relation to the camera, so you can select a particular section of a 360° pano and use that as a background no matter which direction the camera is pointed. I'm slowly building a library of very high-res 360° backgrounds with a tripod, autostitch and lots of photoshopping and it'd be great if, when I only want to use a certain part of one for several views of a model I could untick a check box, rather than have to edit the background in PS and reinsert it as a "static" background.

[dalomar_cg]

Re: Background Centred on Camera Focal Point

So to rearticulate, you would like the enviroment projection to rotate with the camera, so that the same part of the image is visible in the background every time, correct? In addition, you would still like to specify the rotation of the bitmap, so that you could make it so the correct part of the image was visible to the camera.

This sounds good, but I have one question for you. Should the camera rotation be taken for both azimuth and altitude or just azimuth? My initial thinking is that it should be just azimuth, but that's just me. Your take?

[Jackson_cg]

Re: Background Centred on Camera Focal Point

So to rearticulate, you would like the environment projection to rotate with the camera, so that the same part of the image is visible in the background every time, correct? In addition, you would still like to specify the rotation of the bitmap, so that you could make it so the correct part of the image was visible to the camera.

Yep, so the rotation and repeat setup would be unaltered from the current setup, but with the ability to set the background fixed in relation to the camera's focal point in the horizontal/azimuth plane. As you say, the background would still have to "rotate" in the vertical/altitude plane so you don't see sky when you look down or ground when you look up.

Just occurred to me that it may be impossible or at least very complex to implement this in VfSU workflow- if I opened a VfSU file, inserted and rotated a spherical background to suit, then ticked the checkbox to "fix" the background to the camera's focal point then all would be fine and well, but if I then subsequently untick that checkbox the background would reset back to it's default coordinates- again fine.... until I retick the check box. Now the only way to set the fixed background position the same as before would be to go to the exact same camera position as before and then tick the check box. Maybe it's not worth the trouble? :-\ I guess a solution would be if we could save environment settings with SU's scenes, but that would be opening a whole other can of worms!

[dalomar_cg]

Re: Background Centred on Camera Focal Point

... until I retick the check box. Now the only way to set the fixed background position the same as before would be to go to the exact same camera position as before and then tick the check box. Maybe it's not worth the trouble? :-\ I guess a solution would be if we could save environment settings with SU's scenes, but that would be opening a whole other can of worms!

Well, I don't think we're going to have any "history" to any of the V-Ray settings. I will say I'm going to push for "selective saving/loading" of visopts/materials for the next version. So you could save these out to different files with just the hdr rotation info. With the move over to XML based formats this actually should wind up being pretty easy.