Hi, I'm made a novel cover for a client, which he liked very much. It has two people in front and two trees on the right and left edges of the pic behind them. However now he's decided he wants the pic to continue onto the spine and then the back cover. How do I change this scene size/camera etc whilst still keeping his original scene just the way he wanted it? Love esther

That's going to be difficult. I've had to do something similar with an animation. Originally I did it in 4:3 aspect ratio then had to change it to 16:9. This is only about 33% more screen size. I could do this by moving the camera back and making it have a wider angle, say, changing a 35mm lens to 27mm. This worked fairly well for this project. The 4:3 version matched the 16:9 version very well, except of course the 16:9 version had more on the sides.

However, when you increase the lens focal length like that, it can introduce distortion. For your project, you might have to photoshop it or render at extreme resolutions with the camera further away from the scene. Vue will do an area render so you can render it in sections.

You should not have to adjust the focal length or move the camera.  I do not know what your rendered dimensions or aspect ration were, so this has to be an estimate. 

If you render to a 300 PPI then there will be 300 pixels for each inch. Knowing how large a new scene you need will give you an estimate of how large a scene you will have to have in relation to the 300 PPI. If your book cover was 6 by 9 inches at 300 PPI for a Vertical 3 x 4 aspect ratio, or 2400 x 2700 pixels and the new will be 12 by 9, plus another 6 by 9. Then adding all of this up will give you an idea of what the new aspect ratio should be. 

Or if uncertain you can increase the Aspect Ratio in steps until two sides of the area to render matches the new calculated area for the new cover, and then crop the remaining. 

As a rule when I do covers, I rarely do more than the top cover and spine.  The back is always reserved for the author's bio, pics, and the bar code for retail sales.  Maybe you could talk the person into a change and save yourself some work and give them more exposure with the author's backcover.

You do have to move the camera or change the focal length. Even if you change the rendering aspect ratio, Vue will attempt to keep the framing the same.

As in my above example, I had a 4:3 image. I needed to add to the sides to create a 16:9 image, but changing the aspect ratio in Vue simply cropped the top and bottom of the 4:3 image to make it 16:9! I could have achieved the same effect in photoshop, but obviously this isn't what I wanted. This is why I had to move the camera back and change the focal length.

That is the problem with 3D software...it all comes back to a camera. This is nice because if you are used to using cameras in the real world, you can transfer that knowledge to 3D...but if you don't know how to use cameras, it can bite you! Think of how you would achieve that effect in the real world...you would have to step back and take a larger picture.

Maybe you have seen these consumer film cameras several years ago that offered a "panoramic" view? All they did was crop the image in the middle. Vue does the same thing.

I guess you could call it "apples and oranges," but I do not move the camera, just the whole scene if necessary.

gosh - it's getting complicated. actually the guy has already written to the publisher and got approval provided the blurb still shows up. They do say I could make the front separate, but it still has to join up I assume or it will look stupid. Craig wants to have quite a lot of sky for the blurb and mostly some ground with some bones and things for the back cover. The original pic was 14.9x21.4 cm front This is what they wrote back to the author Craig:- Hi Craig     Yes it is ok to continue through to the back cover and over the spine which will be about 19.2mm wide, but please bear in mind we have to place text on the back and spine so it depends on the graphic to be used as text can be hard to read and images can get obscured by it. We place the blurb and other text on the back cover and spine ourselves, please do not place text on back cover or spine. A good way to do this is to make the back cover and spine as one document and the front cover as a separate document i.e back cover 149mm wide plus 19.2mm = 168.2mm total width, just increase canvas size by 19.2 on the right hand side once you have reversed the template. Please pass this on to Esther. If you or Esther have any questions just let me know.

You could always soften the image decrease the saturation and fade out the spine area, if they agreed.

They tell me, the back cover requires the BarCode. It has to be printed in a very high quality black and white to register correctly when scanned.

This is one of the features that bryce has that I wish Vue had.  I've often added a pile of pixels onto one side or the other of a bryce render when I've needed to re-aspect ratio it (and the new bit of render fits pixel perfectly onto the edge of your orginal camera view render - its the camera pan settings in the camera properties dialog for anyone thats interested), but as much as I've tried, the only way to expand the horizontal size of the vue render that I've found is to move the camera/change focal length and hence change the initial image. Vue's camera feels more real to me, but Bryce's strange pan property in that case was handy.

Two ways.

#1 fake the whole thing. Render a potential continuation by simply shifting the camera to the left and then combine the images in Photoshop. Maybe as variation, render foreground of the original as separate layers and then change only the background image to the size you need. And again, combine that in Photoshop.

#2 change the ratio and then use the original image (with in Photoshop roughly added left side) as background so that you have a reference where your foreground must be. And then do the modifications so that it is what you need.

And always - in illustrations, render layers. More flexible. When the client wants to change more things, add whatever to it, you don't have to render the whole thing again.

*And always - in illustrations, render layers. More flexible. When the client wants to change more things, add whatever to it, you don't have to render the whole thing again.

*Wabe's right with this, currently I'm doing a series of 5 covers for a client, the main image being the same for continuity but an added central image which is different each time.
using layers means I only have to change that centre piece rather than do the whole thing 5 times, saves a lot of work.

One thing I do if it has to wrap round, is look at the main image background colour and use that as a fill colour with a bit of cloud added in CS3, it's a cheat but sometimes it's good enough for the client, depends on how they want it really!

thankyou everyone. I was hoping simeone clever would say "oh easy - jut move the camera by exactly whatever units etc but of course with tilt of camera etc this can't be. so now you've all given me ideas (and a nrw worry - the barcode0 i'll play.i think barcodes just get glued om or printed as awhite rectangle on the pic love esther

Well, one clever trick might be to use the panorama view trick. Switch to "panorama view" with for example 180° and not sperical view.

The only problem you will have is that you have to render it a lot bigger because the view is so much wider - height was the problem in my case. But when I enlarged the panoramic view in Photoshop so that it was the same as the normal view it fitted perfectly.

hmmm. it kind of looks distorted at the ends but the middle bit with the people looks okay, oh that may have been a 360

i think barcodes just get glued om or printed as awhite rectangle on the pic
love esther

Mmmm i dont like to get glued on anything

Chris

Well little black and white stripey thing - you just do as you're told

in the end the pic the client liked had opposite lighting to the front cover anyway, so i made a blurry blendy type thing for the spine which they can adjust or take out and do something different with. thanks everyone. love esther