Attached Link: http://sites.google.com/site/bagginsbill/free-stuff/environment-sphere

Follow the link to my free stuff area for this freebie. There are several sub-pages with lots of info and instructions.

Go directly to here > http://sites.google.com/site/bagginsbill/free-stuff/environment-sphere/environment-sphere-demo-renders < to see some demo renders.

If you have questions or need help or you find bugs, please report them here. I'll respond as soon as possible.

Ask quick, though, because tomorrow afternoon I go out of town for 2 days on business and I won't be Poserizing.

"This is because most probes are backwards. Don't argue with me."

:) LOL! I think I'll use that as my quote here at Rendo!

Thanks for the prop!

I saw the site. Thanks man!

What's this Matmatic?

Quote - I saw the site. Thanks man!

What's this Matmatic?

Just the single best shader program known to mankind! :)

Download it here:

http://sites.google.com/site/bagginsbill/free-stuff/matmatic

Find out how to use Matmatic at the bottom of the first post in this thread:

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?thread_id=2722867

7/29/08

BB:

Thanks!

LMK

Thanks once again for your efforts and generosity BB! :biggrin:

UA

BB--you aren't working for Smith-Micro because.......

DUDE! You're a creative machine! Now, I'm going "dude". :lol: LOLOLOLOLOLOL

Awesome BB, simply awesome! Can't thank you enough!

excellent again BB, although i have still have no idea how to create ibl image maps using the P7 shaders from the Equirectangular pics, or standard photos(i think the math is beyond me,lol)
Thanks for the sphere

Next week I'll publish some tools you can use to make an IBL for your scenes, using only Poser. It's a prop with a special shader, and a camera setting.

You set up an environment sphere, rotate it how you want it, and apply effects if desired. You load the special prop and camera settings, render, and save the resulting IBL probe. Then you load it into a light.

Optionally, you load up big props like buildings and ground cover, trees, cars, whatever you want to include in the environmental lighting. You light them using the first probe. Then you render a second probe that includes these other surrounding props. In the end you have a custom IBL probe that includes the sky and stuff from the photo, as well as the big props you've put in the scene.

It usually takes less than 5 minutes and you'll get perfect matching, regardless of how you spin the environment sphere, or what special effect you put on the sky.

Hypothetically--if I render an image in Vue up to 1600x1200 px as a bmp file, could that be used instead of a photo? Vue affects some poser materials in less than a friendly way, and that might be quicker to bypass the whole thing with dome and the new tool of which you speak.

I think.

Quote - Hypothetically--if I render an image in Vue up to 1600x1200 px as a bmp file, could that be used instead of a photo? Vue affects some poser materials in less than a friendly way, and that might be quicker to bypass the whole thing with dome and the new tool of which you speak.

I think.

I agree with the way Vue uses poser materials (C4D is FAR better at it) but I have already rendered using 'normal' images in the envshpere. It works fine but is not without problems, ie boundary wrapping. However you can minimize that by roataing the sphere on it's y axis. The other issue would be matching IBL lights for the scene.

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?thread_id=2697974&page=3#message_2985027

Thanks again for your generosity and sharing your knowledge with us

In that thread I linked above, on page 2, I actually said how to make your own IBL.

But that was before I understood the problem of gamma correction, and also before I fully understand that "mirror ball" format is not the same as "angular map" format. You need angular map format for accurate IBL in Poser, and you need to take gamma correction into account for accurate color reproduction. That's why I have a custom prop shape and a custom shader - not a straight up reflection shader.

If you want to try the technique discussed in that thread, even though it is wrong on two counts, it is written here:

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?thread_id=2697974&page=2#message_2983155

Awesome stuff, oh the God of shaders!   :thumbupboth:

We're not worthy!

The lighting is very subdued and yellow. There is a ceiling mounted light fixture with 4 bulbs, and the walls are yellow. The cabinets and appliances are white, but the lighting makes them look cream colored. I generated and loaded an IBL image, and I also set up a dim, yellow spot light from above. (Necessary for speculars, and also because the original photo is LDR, not HDR, so the hot spot information from the light bulbs are missing in the photo.)

I placed Simon into the scene, applied VSS shaders to him, and rendered.

gasp there's a nekkid man in the kitchen!     I think I like it   ;)

(The man is drunk and demanding food preparation. His wife and sister are disgusted. Again.)

I too would like to say a BIG thankyou 2 bagginsbill for his generosity,i cant imagine a world without his expert knowledge, again thankyou... looking forward to the custom IBL creator 

The lady in the white turtle neck seems to be looking at the box and thinking "Not leftovers again!" Thanks once again for another awesome freebie.

I have Poser 7 where do I download for that? Says to contact you? Starting with nothing so would need to get pointed to the right ones. The only thing I found was for Poser 6 which I don't use. Not sure how much work it's going to take to set this all up as I don't understand any of it at this point.
Thanks

Marque,

Sorry about the delay in answering. I have uploaded the Poser 7 version of matmatic beta 1 scripts to my matmatic page.

http://sites.google.com/site/bagginsbill/free-stuff/matmatic

This is what I knocked together last night. Just the Environment, a panoramic image plus matching IBL probe, the car, Miki2.

Hell, yeah! Nice job. The car looks great.

In case it result useful for this prop, there is a program called HDRI Shop it's free:

gl.ict.usc.edu/HDRShop/

With this you can converst a lat/long picture to a probe then you can use the matching IBL as in the env sphere. the only thing I noticed is that the sphere must me rotated 180º in the Y axis to match properly.

Good job ima70 - I meant to tell people about that program but I forgot. And you're correct, you must rotate the sphere 180.

OR

Rotate the image in HDRSHOP by half its width.

However, while this does work, there is a problem if you're going to use my special effects. In such cases, the original image does not have the correct colors and brightness. Nor will it take into account any large nearby props (such as a wall) or your ground color (if you're using a 3D ground.)

That is why I'm working on my IBL Generator tools. With a couple clicks you'll be able to render a 100% perfect IBL probe to go with any scene you've set up, including your props, your special effects, and whatever rotation you happen to have used on the EnvSphere.

That soud wonderful

Thank you for your work!

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

i am searching for months free 360 pics but not luck . and then he comes and he just found them.

can you please tell me what did you writte in google?

the best part is that now you can see the image in hte preview. which is great for setting my scene.

thank you for htis

so how now to get this outtside of poser without the enviorment visible?

1. you render two times. once with the envsphere. the second time without it and only some simple shaders. then you make a matte.
2. you make a second sphere that is smaller and you make it green. then you have basicly greenscreen.

thankyou BB,excellent work,looking forward to using this later

I typed many useless things. Then I found the word "equirectangular". Very unique and very specific.

From Google Image search, that word led me to flickr.com. In flickr alone there are thousands and thousands of equirectangular images. Many are in excellent super high resolution, 10000 by 5000!

Quote - I typed many useless things. Then I found the word "equirectangular". Very unique and very specific.

From Google Image search, that word led me to flickr.com. In flickr alone there are thousands and thousands of equirectangular images. Many are in excellent super high resolution, 10000 by 5000!

thank you for your help. do you have to register? 

no

Thank You Bagginsbill for all that you do for us!! 

Would it be better to get the biggest image size available?

If you're going to directly see the sphere, then yes biggest is best, especially if you're not using a wide-angle camera.

For reflections only, high resolution doesn't matter much.

For environmental lighting, high resolution doesn't matter at all.

The only reason not to use the biggest is to save memory and perhaps compute time. I've seen Poser go nuts taking all day rendering reflections of a 10K by 5K e-sphere image, while in the same scene just zipping through reflections of a 6K by 3K e-sphere image.

A question:  I have rendered using your Environment Sphere Dome, and I think what you did was excellent.  How is that when I render I get fuzzy background?  Is it because of the low resolution image?  Should I move my camera or better yet, size the sphere down a bit?

Other than that, I like it?

Quote - A question:  I have rendered using your Environment Sphere Dome, and I think what you did was excellent.  How is that when I render I get fuzzy background?  Is it because of the low resolution image?  Should I move my camera or better yet, size the sphere down a bit?

Other than that, I like it?

One of the most curious things about the environment sphere is this: changing its size has little to no effect on how big looks, or on how fuzzy it looks.

The fuzziness is due to you looking at a tiny part of the photo. You need a really big photo to get away with looking at only a tiny part.

Everyone should experiment, please, and learn how things work. Change the sphere scale to 50% - render it? See no change. Try 10%. See no change. If you get small enough, though you'll start to see perspective distortion - i.e. where your camera is will change how it looks.

Try changing your camera focal length. Go smaller. Go bigger. Move the camera to bring your subject into view at different focal lengths. Observe the changes in the background.

Great picture, ice-boy. Try animating it - it's even more stunning.

i will do a quick animation. reflective humans(terminator 2 anyone? ) look incredible to me.

ohhh i dont know why but your ENVsphere is better then anything other that i found on the internet. it looks like it renders faster.
why is that?

for the sun i used the glow effect in after effects. i did this for a more realistic feel. i rendered the specular in a seperate video. then in AE i just used it as a matte.

Very nice animation.

I'm not sure why my sphere renders faster than others. Perhaps because I kept the poly count lower? Higher poly count slows things down. On the other hand, going too low on poly count results in larger polygons, which tend to be "seen" by the ray-tracer more often, and requires more culling. Or maybe it is because my polygons are facing inwards, unlike every other sphere I've ever seen.

maybe because they are invwards.
but you agree that it renders faster? or is it only on my computer? because its an obvious change.

ice-boy:

Everything I do is faster than anybody else's implementation. :)

I'm impressed that you notice the subtle stuff I do - always. You're the only one who really got excited about gamma correction in shaders, and realized you could do it yourself all over the place.

My new shadow catcher has the same behavior. Poser has a built-in shadow catcher. I am making a new one in shaders, which should be slower. Mine does 10 times more stuff, renders better, and has lots of control parameters. But mine is faster than the built-in one.

I work on these tools for days, weeks, even months. The EnvSphere and its shaders took me about 150 hours. I did over 400 test renders. The GenIBL tool took months of research, experimenting, and testing. I went down so many wrong paths on that one. Then one day, while I was on my usual 2 hour drive to one of my clients, I was thinking about how refraction works, and I worked out how to do the perspective correcting lens in my head. I was so excited, I coded it up as soon as I got out of the car. I was so surprised it worked. Who would have thought that setting the index of refraction to 1,000,000 would have any practical use? Still, after that I fine tuned the number of polygons in the probe for hours, trying to find the minimum that produced accurate reflections, so it would be fast.

new test render. it looks good.  used only your shaders.

Quote - ice-boy:

Everything I do is faster than anybody else's implementation. :)

I'm impressed that you notice the subtle stuff I do - always. You're the only one who really got excited about gamma correction in shaders, and realized you could do it yourself all over the place.

My new shadow catcher has the same behavior. Poser has a built-in shadow catcher. I am making a new one in shaders, which should be slower. Mine does 10 times more stuff, renders better, and has lots of control parameters. But mine is faster than the built-in one.

I work on these tools for days, weeks, even months. The EnvSphere and its shaders took me about 150 hours. I did over 400 test renders. The GenIBL tool took months of research, experimenting, and testing. I went down so many wrong paths on that one. Then one day, while I was on my usual 2 hour drive to one of my clients, I was thinking about how refraction works, and I worked out how to do the perspective correcting lens in my head. I was so excited, I coded it up as soon as I got out of the car. I was so surprised it worked. Who would have thought that setting the index of refraction to 1,000,000 would have any practical use? Still, after that I fine tuned the number of polygons in the probe for hours, trying to find the minimum that produced accurate reflections, so it would be fast.

well i notice things buecause i read everyhitng you writte. i like all the technical stuff that you do. i dont always understand them but i try my best to do. 
you are obvious a very smart man. you are also a thinker. i think you wrotte many time that this is your hobby and that you like the chalange. i agree.
i just hope ...i really hope that one day the people who are working on poser will take your ideas.

the best things about this new sphere is :

1. preview.
   this is a big thing because you can set your scene in 5 seconds. before that it was almost a pain to do it with all the renders.
2. fast rendering.
   it works so fast its not even funny anymore.

about gamma correction: are you really sure that i am the only one? gamma correction was basicly the last step where you made poser renders look.....REALISTIC. the difference is obvious. i really think there should be a sticky. and a mini tutorial. there should be NOOOOO renders without gamma correction.

shadow catcher? hmmm. whats this? when you render only the shadow and make the ground invisible?

GEN IBL is groundbreaking :)

In the sample note that I used a displacement map (granite) applied to the ground plane to suggest the grassy  ground in the photo.

i'm not BB, but i'll take a crack at part of this...

first of all, he has a better shadow catcher that he gives away.  i suggest pointing at that instead of the ground  plane one.

second, you can fake it.  you've already got the ground worked out, now all you need is the sides and top.  if you don't want to make more of a pano and use BB's environment sphere, just use a box.  the thing is to give his IBL generator something to work with that works fairly well.  IBLs aren't very precise, so you don't really have to be precise with the environment.  also, we don't really know what we can't see, so you can have some fun.  just don't give the IBL generator a huge unnatural patch of a solid color.  once you have  a rough environment on all sides, load up his IBL generator and make some IBLs.  for anything lit, i use the method suggested by (iirc) Synthetic. and iterate my IBL renders to simulate the bounce.  but if everything is already lighting independent (like a background photo usually is), then i'd just do the one IBL render.