Normally when creating equirectangular panoramas for QTVR I use a max camera and in the Vray: Camera rollout I specify the camera type as Spherical and I enable Overide FOV and set the FOV to 360.
However these same Vray: Camera settings don’t work with the VrayPhysicalCamera. How do I do it then?
Basically you can’t. You need to adjust the bright/dark multipliers and use a standard camera. See http://www.chaosgroup.com/forum/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=19344
I have been thinking of something that would make the physical camera render 6 fisheyes (like real-life panorama’s are made) and then stitch them in a panoramastitcher like PTGui but I haven’t found out how. I keep believing this should be possible. The stitching could be automized to a droplet, but I guess quality would suffer because of going from fish-eye-images to equirectangular to cube faces. Advantage is you don’t have to fix/change the lighting setup.
I’m working on a project in which I use panoramas but the scenes are so simple I used max camera and boxcamera option.
Thanks for the thread link. Yes, I was beginning to suspect the same. And I agree we need some lenses for the VrayPhysicalCam 
Or as someone suggested in the other thread we need a VrayPhysicalSpheroCam… Maybe we should move this thread to the wishlist.
if someone could tell me of real physical camera optics that ca do panos, I would buy it in a sec. It is just not possible. Since the physical camera is based on real optics… it is impossible there too. If your only issue is exposure. I suggest you adjust that in the color mapping. A bright multiplier of 0.01 or less can get you there.
Hey Chris. What about the spherocam? I know its not a standard camera, are its optics incorrect? Surely the mechanics of that camera could be simulated in a virtual environment…
Do I just need to adjust the bright multiplier to simulate the correct exposure? I guess I can do test renders with the vrayphysical cam and try to match the “correct” exposure with color mapping in the max cam pano. I was just trying to avoid turning the sun brightness up and down because I have interior and exterior panos in the same model. Adjusting the brightness of the sun just seems wrong in so many ways…
Actually that is mechanical not optical… since it rotates.
Yes, you are right on both counts. try to avoid dimming the sun.
besides it DOES have a lot of issues that you dont want to simulate 
Thorsten
Indeed in real life, with a real physical camera, panorama’s are made using a fisheye lens. You take 6 photos (4 around, 1up, 1down), while rotating around the nodal point of the lens.
An example of such a lens:
http://www.sigma-photo.com/lenses/lenses\_all\_details.asp?id=3319&navigator=4
That’s a lens with a horizontal field of view of 180°. So 4 images in row are enough to fill the total 360° (you need some overlap)
Same principle for vertical field of view.
Those fish-eyes then be stitched together in a program like PTGui to make a full sperical panorama.
So to simulate this behaviour, there would be 6 renders to be made + additional stitching (but this can be automized)
@instinct
What are those issues? If you mean parallax, this can be perfectly avoided i think.
Actually with 180… all you need is 2… one up and one down, or front and back. We do it all the time.
there is this product
http://www.kaidan.com/Detail.bok?no=101
Which is I thought was interesting, so I modelled the lens and tried it out on a scene to make a pano with the physical camera and exposure. I have to say i am impressed with the result. The lens i modelled needs some tweaking, so I will have a little more of a play and post up my results.
The Kaiden lens is only for panos and no full 360 QTVRs.
Cool idea.
I found this shot it is almost square to the camera so it might help to get the right parabolic shape.
ahhhh I was searching for a better picture!
If you get the lens right photowarp should unwarp it, there is a 30 day trial <br /> <b>Warning</b>: Undefined variable $title in <b>C:\xampp\htdocs\eyesee360.com\article.php</b> on line <b>29</b><br />
yeah thats what I have used. The rendered image could also be put into a max environment to export a QTVR for free 
check out the example. Excuse the creases on the ground plane, it caused by some bad mesh on the lens.
Nice!
The lens model looks pretty close
In this paper http://www.cs.columbia.edu/techreports/cucs-004-01.pdf they use a reflecting surface of Sr (t)=(z(t) , g(t)) not sure if that is just a random shape they selected or some sort of ideal.
i will develop it a bit more and post some more results shortly.
Nice one CJ. Thats pretty damn cool
what’s about the VrayDomeCam? what type of cam is it?
best regards
themaxxer
its not a physical camera