I am trying to create something that I want to use in a computer game. The final product will have the game player walk around in a 3D world and the background will be the "world" created in Bryce, a nice outdoor scene. This is what we refer to as the skybox...

To do this in the game, I have to create something a shoebox. The shoebox will effectively be the world, and the player will be walking around within the box. To have a realistic back ground, I created a world in Bryce that now has to be rendered in such a way that I can make the six pictures/textures for the in-sides of the shoebox. This will effectively give the effect of a person walking around in a 3D world... (At the bottom of the post, I have written an instruction on how to get to a web page that would help you get a basic idea of what a skybox is. It is a tutorial on how to create a basic skybox for the game. You can just look at the screenshots as they go along, I'm sure you'd get what I need to do.)

To be able to make the 6 sides connect seamlessly, I have to render a number of different angles of the Bryce world, and manipulate it in a paint program so that I can have a final batch of 6 pics.

When I try to change the view point in Bryce, I keep loosing the camera hight. Imagine this: if you want to take different pics with a normal camera so that when you place 4 pictures side by side, you'd form a view of what was right around you, you'd need to use a tripot. This will stabalise the shot and make the horizon connect perfectly in the final row of pictures.

How can I do this in Bryce?
1.) How can I rotate the view on the spot without panning by accident? Like a real photographer, I need the camera to stay on the same spot the whole time.
2.) How can I rotate the view so that I don't loose the camera's angle to the ground? Like with a camera on a tripot, I need 4 steady shots...

Any help will be appreciated!

Thanks.

PS. Do the following, and you'd get to a tut on how to create a skybox: http://unreal.gamedesign.net/

Then, to the left is a button to go to Tutorials. Then, click on UnrealED. Browse down till you get to a skybox tutorial. It should be Wolf's Tutorial #7. Click on the word SkyBox...

Attached Link: http://www.phase2.net/claygraphics/cubicqtvrexamples.html

Well basically you're making a cubic VR type of environment whereas you render all 6 sides of a scene to get the true panorama, the best way to rotate your camera is by selecting it, then select the camera's attibutes and rotating it on it's Axis', there are numerical inputs there so you can be precise, I have made many pano sky images for games using Bryce, most usually use a sphere or "Skydome" for game engines, but cubic or "skyboxes" just have to be rendered in 6 degrees of 90, starting clockwise for the sides, then up then down. I have some samples of Cubic rendered stuff at my site:http://www.phase2.net/claygraphics/cubicqtvrexamples.html Just save each camera rendered rotation as a pict or whatever then stich them together and you should be good to go.

Is it better to render the 4 sides by rotating the camera 90 degrees, or will it be better to pan the camera a few, er... what?... metres/feet/units?... so that you can get better sky and floor pics? Thing is, I don't want to struggle with sides not lining up perfectly... I'm using PSP6, do you know of a way to do this? To MAKE the 6 sides fit perfectly? The reason why I ask if it will be better to pan the camera rather than to rotate it, is because I found that I cant get the sides to line up right, because I'd get two different angles of the same spot - on the border where the two sides or the two images should meet.

Have you tried using the 360 panoramic rendering mode?

I haven't, cos I think my machine is too sloooowwww.... :-) But, in light of what I want to do, will panoramic rendered environments suit my purpose? And what quality will it be. You know that you should have the best quality pics for the best effect of course... Thanks for your help, clay. I visited your site and I realised you are professional in the field. I really DO appreciate your help! It's thanks to you and others that these forums are such a terrific help. Hopefully I'd gain enuff knowledge here and later on, so that I can help others in turn. Thanks!

Attached Link: http://www.roguewars.com/

The 360 pano options should work for your purposes, as for quality, here's a game site that I did the skies for, I rendered them in 360 panoramics then they plugged the skies into 3DMax, there are screenshots from the game there: http://www.roguewars.com/

Am I doing something wrong? All I get rendered is a massive picture looking all distorted, like I'm looking with a drug induced left eye through a rat's ass! :-) Am I supposed now to go in a paint program like PSP and devide the thing up in my 6 sides of the SkyBox?