Skydomes are great. With the correct shaders you can get superb results, right.

Er, well not really. With all the will in the world, a dome cannot reproduce the dramatic perspective you can see from a real sky. The only way I can imagine you could do something similar would be to make a dome 12000 miles radius (scaled to Poser, of course). Not really practical, huh? Even then, you'd lose a lot because there would only be a single layer. So, you tack on lots more layers, each with a degree of transparency. Oh, the agonizing hit in render times.

The alternative is to use something like Rubicon Digital's SkyGen. It's a lovely product but with some caveats. It uses the Poser background as a shader, so unless you're prepared to save as a JPG, the background is lost. The lack of all round coverage also means it's of limited use for reflections, too. Great for comping but not so good if you like to get the reflections right. Even a dome with a similar set of colours wouldn't get the necessary accuracy.

Now to my question...

Is there anything out there which can do the full coverage of a dome, combined with the dramatic perspective effects available from SkyGen? Is it something practical for me to make?

Any ideas/opinions/tricks/tips or advice welcomed.

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Well.. IMO the RDNA TerraDome is great. I use it whenever I need to do outside renders these days. The great thing is, it comes with suitalbe lights and all. And the sky is textured in a way so that it - IMO - looks right.

Sorry - I don't know what you mean by dramatic perspective.

My free Environment Sphere has a diameter of 1500 feet. Yet this clearly looks much grander than that. What am I missing?

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like Trekkie, I've not had any issues with a lack of dramatic perspective in things like TerraDome. There may be better things out there, but at least now I have something that allows me to utilize some of these large building models that I've had for years... :D

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As Bill pointed out some time ago, your camera focal length needs to be set fairly low: 35mm seems to produce reasonable results. And having a good quality equirectangular image helps as well.

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Rightio. But suppose I want to set my focal length to something close to the human eye, 100mm, for example?

I'll have to take some photos out of my window when there are some interesting clouds, just to show you what I mean. I know, a picture is worth a thousand words and all that.

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Quote - Rightio. But suppose I want to set my focal length to something close to the human eye, 100mm, for example?

I'll have to take some photos out of my window when there are some interesting clouds, just to show you what I mean. I know, a picture is worth a thousand words and all that.

The human eye is 50 mm. And Poser's focal length is wrong by a factor of 1.4. To accomplish a human eye type of field of view, you want 50 / 1.4 = 35 HAHAHAH.

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My render above was done at 15mm. With the 1.4x factor (actually it is the square root of 2, or 1.4142), that's the equivalent of a 21 mm lens on a standard full-frame SLR. Landscape photographers generally use wide angle, 20 mm to 24 mm, for pleasing grand landscape images. That's why I used that value.

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Here are some more examples. Click for full size.

This is Poser 100 mm. (141 mm SLR equivalent)

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Poser 50 mm (71 mm equiv.)

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Poser 35 mm (50 mm equiv.)

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Poser 25 mm (35 mm equiv.)

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Poser 15 mm (21 mm equiv.)

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And finally

Poser 10 mm (14 mm equiv.)

14 mm (ultra wide angle) prime lenses are highly prized by landscape photographers. If you want to do like them, use 10mm in Poser.

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Here's the 10 mm rendered large. Click for full size.

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Quote - The only way I can imagine you could do something similar would be to make a dome 12000 miles radius

Aha. I pondered what you could possibly mean by this. It finally dawned on me that you're making an incorrect assumption.

You believe that you'll see more of a larger sphere. This is simply untrue.

In general, as objects move away from you, you see more. But when you make an environment sphere or dome larger, it isn't simply moving away from you. It's also getting bigger!

When something becomes bigger, you see less of it, unless you move it farther away, right?

And the curious thing about pictures in a giant sphere is this. As they move farther away, they also get bigger, and the two effects exactly cancel each other out. A picture mounted to a sphere (or any other shape) that moves away in exact proportion to its size does not change its apparent size at all.

When you're at the center of a very large sphere, making it still larger changes nothing about how it looks.

So - the only thing the makes you able to see more clouds or more sky is to make the field of view wider. That's entirely controlled by the camera focal length, as demonstrated above.

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The only advantages of making a sphere bigger are that your camera fits into it easier, less chance that your camera will be outside the sphere when you render, and also more room to move things. For example, if you are animating an F16 fighter jet, five seconds of animation means that the fighter jet will have flown out of a skydome that is 1500 feet in diameter.

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And what about a half sky-dome or quarter half-dome? or a plane...?
To extend the rotation angle make rotate the dome with the camera. To make more natural and not always the same sky image, rotate the dome slower than the camera. It will not give 360 degrees, but can achieve a good angle with normal textures.

Stupidity also evolves!

Quote - With all the will in the world, a dome cannot reproduce the dramatic perspective you can see from a real sky.

The problem is that human eye is not a camera!
All rendering engines use the camera model, a photograph can be very nice but is not what your eye sees.
The camera model is wrong! We need a human eye model.

Stupidity also evolves!

Interesting. So Poser's focal is off? This is new to me. It means that all the years I've been using 50 mm I've actually been using.. what? 70 mm or something? This explains a lot :D Thanks, BB!

Fir focal length can make or break a picture. And Poser's default looks mostly wrong IMO.

Fantastic advice, folks. Particularly BB.

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BB,
i wish I was part of your family so I could inherit some of your amazing intelligence.
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lululee,

Be careful what you wish for, insanity is also hereditry, and we all know BB is a little crazy... :-)

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Helgard,
True enuff, but it is such a valuable form of insanity.
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LOL.

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Perspective is a funny thing. Quite a few people think they understand it, and actually talk about it with conviction, but they don't really get it.

Here are two spheres. Which one is closer?

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The spheres have not changed, but I added the ground and a box.

Now which one is closer?

Were you surprised?

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Voila.

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Quote - And Poser's focal length is wrong by a factor of 1.4.

Well perhaps, then again perhaps not. Actually focal length by itself says nothing at all about the field of view! Focal length is only meaningful in this respect when it is considered in conjunction with some specific size of image plane, and where the image plane is assumed to be at one focus of the lens (or some other defined point).

A 50mm lens will yield one field of view in a 35mm format camera, but an entirely different field of view on a 4"×5" format camera. Knowing the focal length without knowing the size of the image plane yields no useful information.

In Poser with a square document window, and the camera scaled to 100%, the field of view at 50mm covers approximately 28.4° from side to side. With 50mm at an aspect ratio of 4:3 the field is approx 28.4° by 21.5°. These values were determined empirically so may not be exact, but should be close enough for most practical purposes.

les,

Excuse my ignorance, but what do you mean by "practical purposes". How would we actually apply this information in a practical sense?

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les,

I understand about the field of view being dependent on focal length and image plane size. As the proud owner of a Nikon D90 and couple thousand dollars worth of lenses, I'm well aware that 50mm on a DX sensor has the equivalent FOV of a 75mm on an FX sensor. The factor is 1.5. For Canon APS-C format, the factor is 1.6.

The FOV you quoted is equivalent to a 70mm lens on a 35mm sensor. Which is why I say one must multiply by 1.4 to understand what apparent FOV you're going to get in terms of the most common interpretation of 50mm being mid-range on an SLR camera. It's going to look like a 70mm lens was used.

So, given that Poser doesn't offer us a second parameter to specify the image "sensor" size (FX, DX, APS-C, Medium Format, etc.) then we have to conclude that the "sensor" size was chosen and fixed by the developers. Further, I assume that they decided what sensor size to emulate not because of randomness or stupidity, but an understanding of what 50mm means to most people.

Now without any documentation, but with the understanding of decades of common standardization around 35 mm SLRs, what would a reasonable person expect is Poser's sensor size? Would it be sensible to assume it is 35 mm, since that is wildly the most common format of camera in use? I think so.

And for sure there are thousands of Poser users who mistakenly believe that is the case. Knowing that thousands of Poser users would have that expectation, I consider it a mistake that the crop factor for Poser is the square root of 2.

It is abundantly clear to me that the intention of the author of this bit of code had planned to make it 35mm. But whoever that was, they made a trivial mistake somewhere and accidentally included a multiplier that is the square root of 2.

I can't imagine that this was intentional. The crop factor of 1.414 compared to a 35mm camera does not correspond with any known camera. FX or "full frame" is 1 (same as 35mm). Nikon DX is 1.5. Canon APS-C is 1.6.

If I'm not right about this being a mistake, then what is your explanation for the square root of 2?

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Quote - Excuse my ignorance, but what do you mean by "practical purposes".

By "practical purposes" I mean anything that is likely to be significant when you are composing a scene in Poser.

Quote - How would we actually apply this information in a practical sense?

I'm not saying that you necessarily would want to apply this information. My point was rather that focal length taken on it's own is not helpful, nor meaningful. Angle of view does at least tell you something real about the scene, focal length on its own does not.

Quote - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0111958/quotes?qt0415353
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[he points to some plastic cows on the table]
Father Ted: are very small; those
[pointing at some cows out of the window]
Father Ted: are far away...

Quote - > Quote - The only way I can imagine you could do something similar would be to make a dome 12000 miles radius

Aha. I pondered what you could possibly mean by this. It finally dawned on me that you're making an incorrect assumption.

You believe that you'll see more of a larger sphere. This is simply untrue.

In general, as objects move away from you, you see more. But when you make an environment sphere or dome larger, it isn't simply moving away from you. It's also getting bigger!

When something becomes bigger, you see less of it, unless you move it farther away, right?

And the curious thing about pictures in a giant sphere is this. As they move farther away, they also get bigger, and the two effects exactly cancel each other out. A picture mounted to a sphere (or any other shape) that moves away in exact proportion to its size does not change its apparent size at all.

When you're at the center of a very large sphere, making it still larger changes nothing about how it looks.

So - the only thing the makes you able to see more clouds or more sky is to make the field of view wider. That's entirely controlled by the camera focal length, as demonstrated above.

Erm, nope. The larger the dome, the lesser the apparent curvature. Like the sky. :) Anything I put on the surface would (naturally) be larger unless I apply a scaling factor.

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Sam, what do you mean by curvature. In the image I posted with the airplane, in what way does that look like a 1500 foot sphere? It looks like miles and miles of sky and sea.

I totally don't understand what you're referring to by apparent curvature. It's not apparent to anybody what size that sphere is.

Let me put this to you another way. Suppose I render that same image but with the sphere scaled to 50 feet, and also to 5000 feet. What is your prediction about how those images would differ?

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I know you won't believe me, but here is an indoor equirectangular image mounted on my environment sphere. I did not do any tricks to fool you.

I scaled the sphere to different sizes and rendered each, mixed them up, and assembled them into one image. No modification was done to each - I simply copied them. Click for full size.

One of them the sphere was 10 feet in diameter, so the surface is just 5 feet from the camera.

One of them is at the original size of 750 diameter, so the surface is 750 from the camera.

One of them is scaled to a mile in diameter!!

Which is which?

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You can get the image I used here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/simons/2057438156/

Try it yourself.

And let me assure you that this has nothing to do with it being an indoor scene. The same is produced with an outdoor photo. If necessary, I'll render that, too.

In what way is the curvature of the sphere is visible?

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You can browse that scene interactively here.

http://www.fieldofview.com/flickr/?page=photos/simons/2057438156/

Click and drag the mouse to rotate the camera. Press and hold Ctrl or Shift to change the focal length.

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Typo - above I meant to say that one of them is 375 feet from the camera, not 750 feet.

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The only time I have ever needed to scale up an environment sphere is when either dealing with very large objects, such as a full scale Titanic in this image (at 890 feet, it was a bit hard to make it look good in a sphere with a radius of 750 feet, lol), or when dealing with animation involving great distances, such as a jumbo jet flying into the distance. If the animation is long enough, or the speed is great enough, the object will eventually leave the sphere. Other than that, there is not reason to scale up spheres. (or scale them down, for that matter)

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I get your point, BB. Maybe I am misunderstanding something here but without providing a pic, I can't explain any better. I'll try to get something to show you what I mean.

Thanks all for your continued input; I'm learning a lot of useful stuff, from it in any case.

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Well I for one is HAPPY about the camera explanation stuff. Last time I was even remotely into photography was in the early 1980ies (where I did a lot of Macro photos.. those are FUN!) but since Hubby is a total Photo NERD and has been trying to explain to me why the same lens doesn't have the same range on three different Canon D-SLR cameras (two of his and the last one is my oldest Kid's) without me understanding one whit of it... this helps a LOT!

And I'll certainly keep that in mind with future renders. I'd always assumed that 50mm on the Poser camera was 50mm, and thus somewhere between 80 and 1000 would be good for portraits just like IRL...

Thing is.. my math knowledge is, as I've stated far too often, non-existent. So could someone tell me what I should set the Poser dial to when I want a focal of what I thought was 80? and 100?

For SLR equivalent to 80mm, use 80 / 1.4,which is about 57.

For SLR equivalent to 100mm, use 100 / 1.4, which is about 71.

For SLR equivalent to 150mm, use 150 /1 .4, which is about 107.

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Thanks! I'll try that! Wow it's a BIG difference from what I thought was the correct focal...

Quote -
The problem is that human eye is not a camera!
All rendering engines use the camera model, a photograph can be very nice but is not what your eye sees.
The camera model is wrong! We need a human eye model.

Ermmm...Why???
the physical Camera,lighting& Sky Model is Exactly what we use in Vray
and Maxwell and Modo401

As far as the human EYE model??
trust me I can not explain to you within the scope of a forum post why such a thing
literally Impossible.

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Question about the square root, is this in all versions of poser? If it still exists in the newest ones, someone should be fired over at SM.

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All about cameras, but our eye is not a camera.
A simple experiment:
Take Poser, set any focal distance, take the ground plane, set the Camera to look at the ground plane and apply any texture to the ground plane. Next render the scene.
What do you see? At medium distance the texture looks good, at long distance the texture is not so good and in short distance the texture is horrible and distorted.
You can argue that is the texture, well take a huge and with excellent quality texture. When you render it the result is better, but still is bad at short distance.
Now look through your window and at your desktop at the same time. Do you see that the texture of the desktop that if few centimeters fro your eye horrible and distorted? Nooo!
You can argue that is the focal distance, fine. Adjust Poser's camera to a focal distance until the texture at short distance become to look good. What do you see?, well most of the scene had disappeared remaing a big ground and any object that is far away when visible is deformed.
Meantime your eyes continue to see your desktop surface and the far away though your window continue to be normal, nothing disappear and nothing get deformed no matter where you set your focus.

Now the focal length in action. To adjust the focal distance the lens of a camera moves. Between focus on near and far objects the lens moves some millimeters and depending on the camera it can move some centimeters, also for near or far objects you need to adjust the aperture. For very near objects you need special cameras that doesn't work for long distance unless you change the lens.
Well, beside cartoons, I never noticed the eyes of any person moving front-back, neither changing the eyes for looking at very near or far away objects

Stupidity also evolves!

At medium distance the texture looks good, at long distance the texture is not so good and in short distance the texture is horrible and distorted.
You can argue that is the texture, well take a huge and with excellent quality texture. When you render it the result is better, but still is bad at short distance.

The problem with photo-based textures is that they are comprised of pixels. This is not the fault of the CG camera.

If you looked at a digital photo very closely with the human eye, quality would still erode.

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Paloth,

I think you misunderstand. Kawecki is not talking about the texture, he is talking about the fact that the human eye "auto-adjusts", for lack of a better term.

When you focus with your eyes on near and far objects, you are changing the focal length of your eye. When you change the focal length on a camera in Poser, it appears to move forward or backward. That is the effect that kawecki is talking about, that your eyes don't appear to move forward and backward.

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Not that any of this matters, but the human eye does not change focal length. It changes the focal plane, providing a choice between near or far objects being in focus.

Prime lenses (by definition, a lens that has a fixed focal length) are similar to the eye. They have the ability to change the focal plane, but not the focal length. The eye does this by squeezing the lens, whereas the camera moves lens elements slightly.

A zoom lens is one that has both a variable focal plane and a variable focal length. Zoom lenses provide the ability to change the field of view, or one might think of it as the magnification.

Human eyes cannot change the magnification or field of view, because they are fixed focal length.

Both human eyes and camera lenses can adjust the aperture - the size of the opening letting light through to the sensor. In the eye this is the iris. In a camera, this is the diaphragm. While the mechanisms differ, the effect is identical.

It is an inescapable fact that any lens-based system cannot focus all things at all distances simultaneously, except when the aperture is a pinhole. This includes the human eye. The focal field of a camera is supposed to be a flat plane, but sometimes is slightly curved, resulting in what is called field curvature. The human retina, being a curved surface, produces a decidedly curved focal field.

The depth of the focal field (range of distances that are in focus) is a function of both the focal length and the aperture. Wider apertures produce a narrower depth of field.

Despite what kawecki seems to be saying, the human eye does not simultaneously keep both near and far things in focus, because it too has a limited depth of field, just like a camera does. In bright light, the aperture is small so the depth of field increases. This means that in bright light you will perceive more objects in focus simultaneously. In dim light, the aperture increases to let in more light, resulting in a narrower depth of field. The same is true with cameras.

In camera lens specifications, we talk about the maximum aperture, which defines the ability to collect light. We talk about how "fast" a lens is. Aperture is given as an f/stop, such as f/2.8 or f/5.6 or f/8. Lower numbers mean more light is collected. Consumer grade zoom lenses are usually no better than f/4 and often limited to f/5.6 at longer focal lengths. Pro-grade zoom lenses go down to f/2.8. Consumer-grade prime lenses, those that don't have to offer variable focal length, can be easily f/2.8, while pro-grade primes go down to f/1.4 (4 times faster). Some really exotic ones go to f/1.2 or even f/1.

The human eye is a prime lens and has a maximum aperture of f/3.5. That's not even as good as my cheapest prime lens, or my pocket camera. The human eye sucks at collecting light.

The limited depth of field at f/3.5 is not particularly narrow but it is noticeable. In bright daylight, when the human eye is around f/16, most everything is in focus, but that is true of cameras as well.

In my camera bag, I have a 50mm f/1.8 prime - very fast, very sharp, very inexpensive. I have an 18-105 zoom with aperture f/3.5-5.6 - nice focal range, but not a great light collector. I also have a 17-50 f/2.8 constant aperture zoom. Not so great range, but a great light collector and I don't have to worry about the aperture changing when I use the zoom. That's my favorite lens and it is far far superior to the human eye.

Having said all that, the camera model in Poser is impossibly awesome at focusing. Everything is in focus no matter the distance. Poser has to do extra work to pretend to be a lens-based camera and produce a narrow depth of field - an option I never use because it is so computationally expensive, and not very effective at mimicing what a camera does.

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Much of the lack of "dramatic perspective" when using a dome is due to using texturing images with a (nearly) linear rate of change of horizontal distance from the center, whereas they should show an exponential (squared, in particular) rate of change. The difference will become greater as you approach the horizon.

For those making sky dome texturing images, try using the widest angle available, so that near the edges of the image, the horizontal sky distance covered by an edge pixel (which has a greatly oblique perspective) is many times that covered by a pixel at the center (which has an orthogonal perspective).

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Bookmarked - fantastic thread!

Quote - The problem with photo-based textures is that they are comprised of pixels. This is not the fault of the CG camera.

If you looked at a digital photo very closely with the human eye, quality would still erode.

Quote - Paloth,

I think you misunderstand. Kawecki is not talking about the texture, he is talking about the fact that the human eye "auto-adjusts", for lack of a better term.

Is not the problem due the texture is made of pixels or the human eye adjusts.
In renderings the pixels are stretched vertically, more near the camera more stretched and the stretching increase is very un-linear.
If you increase the number of pixels they still continue to be stretched and look as dashes.
With human eyes this never happens, if you look at a grainy material with round grains, the grains remain round no matter how near we look. The only thing that change is that grains became bigger or smaller, but always round.

Quote - Not that any of this matters, but the human eye does not change focal length. It changes the focal plane, providing a choice between near or far objects being in focus.

There's no way to change the focal plane, there are no muscles in the back of the eye. Also would be easy for a person with short vision with some muscle exercises to achieve normal vision.
If there is no way to change the focal plane and the front of the eye doesn't move to change the focal length then the only remaining possible way to change the focus is to change the refraction index of the liquid inside the eye. Perhaps this really happens.....

Stupidity also evolves!

Ok, I have a practical question, and I hope I explain this well enough.

I read in another thread that to get the best use out of an environment that was rendered in Vue, to be used in Poser, the camera focal length in Poser should match that used in Vue.

So, let us say I wanted to render an equirectangular image in Vue of a sky and terrain to use to create an image of with an aircraft in Poser, and I render the map in Vue using a focal length of say 35mm, what size should I render that image, and should my focal length in Poser then be 25mm for the best results?

And should I use different focal lengths for different purposes. For example, if I am rendering an image in Vue to use to make an image in Poser of something small, say a render of an ant, should the focal length then be different from what I am using if I am going to render the Titanic. I am talking about the focal length in Vue that I need to use to render the image for the environment sphere.

Your specialist military, sci-fi, historical and real world site.

There is no such thing as focal length when rendering an equirectangular image. Who told you that?

It's nonsense.

Use your head. Focal length combined with image size defines the field of view as we've been discussing. In an equirectangular image, the field of view is 360 degrees - an impossibility for a tradiitonal camera at any focal length.

Clearly this scenario has nothing to do with focal length.

What does matter is pixel resolution. I've written about this several times. If you're going to render at a FOV of 90 degrees, you plan to render 1/4 of the sphere. If you want that to be at resolution of 1000 pixels, then you plan that 1/4 sphere = 1000 pixels. Which means the whole sphere image horizontal dimension must be = 4000 pixels.

Suppose you plan to render 36 degrees at 1500 pixels. Then you plan that 1/10 sphere = 1500 pixels. Which means the whole sphere = 15000 pixels.

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Attached Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perspective_distortion_(photography)

Stupidity also evolves!

OK, I am useless at explaining what i mean, so i am going to put up two pictures to explain what my problem is, and why I thought it had something to do with focal length. These are two images rendered in Vue using the HDRI image panoramas included with the program. The first is a city panorama, with a bus.

Your specialist military, sci-fi, historical and real world site.

The second image, I loaded the Garden image included with Vue. The camera, bus, focal length, etc, all stayed exactly the same.

Your specialist military, sci-fi, historical and real world site.

As you can clearly see, there is a problem with scale. The second image would have looked right if there was an ant the size of a bus in the the image.

So in my post above I thought this had something to do with focal length, which it doesn't, so back to the practical question, how do I know what the scale is or how to make the image so that it is in the correct scale if it has nothing to do with focal length?

Your specialist military, sci-fi, historical and real world site.

If you render or photograph a plant that is 10 inches from the camera, then it will look like it is ten inches from the camera at all focal lengths.

Again, as I pointed out much earlier, perspectIve is about where you are, not what magnification you're using. A photo with the perspective of being only inches from an object will always have that perspective when mounted on an EnvSphere.

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OK, that makes sense.

So, I want to render a panaramic image in Vue to use in Poser. I create a scene with sky, terrain, trees, plants, mountains, etc.

It doesn't matter what focal length I use, and I should render the image as you explained earlier when it comes to size.

So the last question is, where should the camera be. In the centre of the scene, obviously, but at ground level, eye height, or where?

Your specialist military, sci-fi, historical and real world site.

It should be where you expect to see everything when you use it.

That means if you expect to look down and see the ground far away, then your camera should be far from the ground.

If you expect to look down and see the ground right under a character's shows, then your camera should be at eye height.

Whatever viewpoint you record is the only viewpoint you can play back. Remember, the magnification is separate and is the only thing that the zoom/focal length controls. It does not control perspective.

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Thanks,

I have been rendering lots of test renders, and you are right. Images rendered with the camera at eye height (I am using 170cm) look good when rendering cars, people, etc. I am going to have to render slightly different ones for use with aircraft.

Your specialist military, sci-fi, historical and real world site.

Throw me a couple of those if you don't mind. Some carefully crafted landscapes would be easier to use than most photos.

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At the moment I am still rendering test images, so very small sizes like 800x400 pixels, just to test everything. Once I am happy that I know exactly what I am doing, I will render them as large as I can, and most probably make a few freebies out of them.

One of my images has 140 000 trees in it, lol, so you can see why I am not rendering at full size until I am sure it is right, it will take a while to render the large images.

Your specialist military, sci-fi, historical and real world site.

Bagginsbill,

Just checking if I am right in my assumptions.

I make a scene in Vue, and render a panoramic image. I set my camera at eye height, 1.7 metres.
I load the panoramic image into Poser as a texture on the EnvSphere. I put my camera in the centre of the scene, at height zero.
If I load props, people, objects, I have to drop them, and the shadow plane, to -1.7 metres, to get the same viewpoint at which I rendered the panoramic image.

Is that correct? If it is, I assume that if someone releases panoramic images like this as freebies, they should then also say at what height the image was rendered, so that people using it will know how much to drop the objects?

Your specialist military, sci-fi, historical and real world site.

You will find that when the sphere is sufficiently large, precise placement of the camera is not necessary. In fact, it can be out of place by quite a bit without any noticeable distortion of the perspective. If this were not the case, then environment spheres would not be nearly so useful as they are.

Technically speaking, if you desire to minimize perspective distortion then you don't depress the scene objects. You raise the center of the sphere to the height of the camera. In fact you'd make the sphere move with the camera, if the camera moves. And it doesn't matter what is in the sphere - be it sky, mountains, forest, - as long as they are distant objects they should appear to be stationary with the camera centered.

Truthfully nobody could ever tell the difference except in an animation involving a camera that changes height by a lot.

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Bagginsbill, but let's say i am rendering a panorama specifically to be used with an image of a helicopter, so in Vue my camera will be say 100 metres above the ground. When I load that panorama into Poser, with the camera at zero height in the centre, the ground will appear to be 100 metres below. So I will load my helicopter in at zero height, it appears to be 100 metres in the sky, but now if I wanted to add something on the ground, I would have to drop that object by 100 metres. Is that correct?

Your specialist military, sci-fi, historical and real world site.

Yes. That is correct.

To be more specific, the actual numerical values don't matter. It is the relative positions that must all be in agreement.

In all cases, the camera should be at the center of the sphere or close to it.

The camera and sphere center can be 10,000 meters above ground 0, as long as you have the objects 100 meters below the camera at 9900 meters, it will all look the same as if the camera and sphere are at 0 and the objects are at -100.

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Cool.

So, as I see it, I should make three sorts of panoramic images for exterior use.

Basic ground level scenes, with the camera at about eye level. The objects (such as trees) in the scene should be far enough away so that their shadows will not fall on whatever objects you are adding to the scene. So, say for instance an area of about 100 metres in diameter that is just open space (in which people can place their characters, objects, props, etc), and then objects such as trees, rocks, mountains, etc, in the distance, and various different skies.
A mid height scene, for use with helicopters, birds, low level aircraft, etc. The camera at about 100 metres, and a terrain that looks good from the sky.
A really high level scene for use with something like a 747 Jumbo jet, where the camera is above the clouds.

Off course there are infinite possibilities, such as space scenes, etc, but i think those three will be the most useful for now.

Any other advice before i start rendering, such as what should be in the scenes, etc?

Your specialist military, sci-fi, historical and real world site.

Those types of perspective make total sense.

Just curious - can Vue render trees and ground without a sky, and produce a transparency?

If so, it would be possible to create a layered environment, with multiple spheres. These could be stacked in interesting ways, and would allow some parallax effects when the camera moves.

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Yes, I can render with a pure white sky, and save that as an alpha layer. I haven't tried it myself but i know it can. I am running a few renders now, will try that as soon as they are finished.

Your specialist military, sci-fi, historical and real world site.

OK, I have an idea, but before I do it, just tell me if it is stupid or not.

The problem with tendering the quirectangular map in Vue is that you have to render a massive image to get the detail you need for a narrow field of vision in Poser.

But, most of the time, you need the main skydome for the reflections and the light, and you just need a narrow section for the actual background.

So, in Vue, when i render a panorama, I can tell it the degrees to render. So if I tell it to render from 0 to 45 degrees, I am only rendering one eighth of the image.

So the idea is something like this. Render a equirectangular image for the skydome at say a size of say 1600 x 800, to give you the reflections, etc. Then render a 45 degree section at something like 1000x4000. Then in a modeller clone a section of the environement dome (a one eighth slice) and load that just inside the dome, and apply the large texture map to that section. Use this as the background for the render.

This should give you a highly detailed 45 degree background for the image, but also correct reflections, etc, for the rest of the image.

Stupid idea? Any other way to increase the resolution without having to use a map of 8000 x4000?

Your specialist military, sci-fi, historical and real world site.

Skydome is not a solution, it requires huge textures. You must find other ways.
Remember Hollywood, you only put in scene what you see.
For background you can use only a plane covering what the camera see. With animations becomes more tricky, depend on how much need to change the background with different frames you will need a bigger plane. You can tile the plane, will a good tilling nobody will notice in the moving scene that the background is repetitive (video games).
You can do more tricks. In a frame you see the landscape and a background image, then in the next frames you point the camera to see only the terrain and in next frames you see again the landscape with background, but this time the background plane was rotated and has other texture image.
If you want you can use a skyglobe for global illumination for the scene, but this time the texture is a low resolution and blurred, you needn't detail for illumination and you do not see the skyglobe, it only illuminate the scene.

Stupidity also evolves!

kawecki,

That is exactly what I am saying, that I use one slice of the skydome, a 45 degree section of it, for a seperate background plane to the actual shot, and the rest of the skydome is only there for reflections and global illumination, etc.

The slice of the skydome has a high resolution texture, and the rest of the skydome has a low resolution texture.

Your specialist military, sci-fi, historical and real world site.

Have you experimented with "cube mapping"?

Stupidity also evolves!

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?message_id=3621275&ebot_calc_page#message_3621275

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Quote - > Quote - Rightio. But suppose I want to set my focal length to something close to the human eye, 100mm, for example?

I'll have to take some photos out of my window when there are some interesting clouds, just to show you what I mean. I know, a picture is worth a thousand words and all that.

The human eye is 50 mm. And Poser's focal length is wrong by a factor of 1.4. To accomplish a human eye type of field of view, you want 50 / 1.4 = 35 HAHAHAH.

Just stumbled across this. Where does the sqrt(2) come into it? I.e., what is the source of the error?

Whichway

Forum: Poser - OFFICIAL

Subject: Lets talk about skies