hborre I haven't tried your resize the camera trick yet.

hborre - I  just tried it and it is quick and easy and works quite well so far.

Thanks,

Love esther

basicwiz - did you ever get the lens working well in a real scene?

Love esther

Quote - and here's a render through the lens:-

Yes, but your IOR is 1.4. Apparently you didn't do the etude or you would know what is happening here.

well I tried all sorts of IORs including 100000 and lots in between.  I had 2 andies a different distances behind a square for a wall, and it seemed to work okay.  put it into a simple scene and not so.  the really high IORs do zoom in but they distort wall corners like crazy.  At least in my scene.

Love esther

I even etuded negatively which turned the andies upside down.

the high IORs distorted my room even more than a small focal lenth did.  the walls actually bent.

I'm glad that worked for you. Esther.  I meant to get back with some renders but got sidetracked.  The camera reduction does cover more area although you would need to find the best location for optimal coverage.  I even mounted a 35mm wide angle, which gives the best view without actual distortion.  If you find a good vantage point on a 100% scale, reducing to between 60 & 50% should require no or very minimal relocation of the camera itself.

maybe this thing will work better in P9.  I tried a buttload of permutations and combinations (focal length*IOR, sep. of refr. plane from camera, hither, camera from 625% to 25%, et al.) in P8 with no success, meaning it works better (less distortion) for an interior shot with no refr. plane AFAICT.  :crying:

I wonder if BB has tried it in any actual poser model scenes.  When I tried it in a real scene it didn't work well at all sorts of IORs and focal lengths. I did make the square really big to see if it would help and it didn't.

Love esther

Has anyone who's used the lense successfully considered making a freebie prop with the right material settings saved as a smart prop to a camera?

that would be good, but you know I followed all the instructions exactly.  well perhaps I should have put the square right on the camera with hardly any space.  and I still don't know if making the square huge detracts from anything or if it has to be exactly the size of the field of camera view.

Love esther

it would be a really handy thing if it worked well.  Perhaps if it came with a python script to auto adjust the square size (if that is important) to the field of view.

Love esther

I'd like to see a screenshot of just where the square should be in relationship to the camera itself. I mean, in a real camera shaped like that the front is actually inside those square shutters, but does that have any relationship to the true front of a virtual camera? I don't know.

given spherical distortion seen in renders using bill's flat refr. lens, perhaps spherical refr. lens would decrease said distortion. he was gonna do something in re: spherical surface rendering, but got tied up with the beta testing.  one of y'all could try it.  spherical distortion may vary as camera position varies from sphere centre.

Guys the one-sided square, perfectly aligned with the camera, very close, with the camera very wide, such as 5 mm, and the refract IOR = 1000000, there is ZERO distortion. You're not doing it right.

At such a high IOR, the square will be a photo in itself. It will show whatever is in front of it at actual size, projected on the square. If you want an entire picture of Andy, then the square must be at least as big as Andy.

Then the real camera is just taking a picture of a picture.

can square be bigger than needed?

I can confirm it works in orthographic mode, anyway.  can't get it to show the ground plane yet.  the square may need to encompass the entire camera view, to avoid confusing results at first. YMMV.

try rendering inside a proper scene that doesn't have much room

Love esther

Not a realistic scene, but there isn't a lot of room in the primitive cube I used.

I didn't make it obvious but the camera is rotated a bit in the horizontal plane, so any distortion of the tile pattern on the wall would be exaggerated.

well that looks good. I had given up but I might have to give it another try.

Love esther

Can a prop be loaded as a smart prop already parented to a camera? If not, can this be accomplished through a Python  script?

Maybe some future version of Poser could include a camera already designed and set up to specifically do this?

lmk

Attached Link: http://sites.google.com/site/bagginsbill/free-stuff/genibl---ibl-generator

The GenIBL tool actually had to load two props - a lens, and a reflecting probe, both correctly positioned with the camera. (Looks like an anal probe - no kidding - the shape was not an option. The math determined the shape.)

And I suppose a camera feature could be added that does the same. Send a note to SM.

:)    BINGO!

I have some ideas, and one out of a hundred of my ideas actually (sort of) work.

lmk