I've been working on making some spherical panorama renders, using Vue, for use in Bagginsbill's Environment Sphere, within Poser.

Here's an example of one that just finished rendering (click to see the large version in my gallery):

I'm planning some more involved landscape scenes, featuring forests. mountains, etc, as well as some further, more straight-forward compositions, with a simple ground plane (desert or sea, etc) like this one.

Just had a couple of questions...

1. What kind of resolution is most desireable for this purpose? I'm rendering out tests at 4000 pixels wide currently. Would a higher resolution be better?

2. Am I best to produce these in high dynamic range (.hdr) format?

Cheers

;-)

This is cool.

 

10000

 

Yes

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looking forward to them. Look great.

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Usually I'm wrong. But to be effective and efficient, I don't need to be correct or accurate.

visit www.aRtBeeWeb.nl (works) or Missing Manuals (tutorials & reviews) - both need an update though

Thanks Bagginsbill

Cool... I will try for a 10000 pixel wide render next then and see how the render time works out.

Saving as hdr instead of jpeg is then trivial to do...

;-)

 

Are you going to offer these for sale?

To start off, I was thinking of putting together a collection of my best renders, in hdr format, as a downloadable freebie... in due course.

I'll post the results I get in my gallery anyway, in jpeg format, at 4000 pixels wide, as I go. If anyone wishes to use these versions in their renders just now, they are most welcome.

But the hdr versions would exceed the gallery limits and need to be shared in a downloadable zip format. I would maybe put them together as a collection of Poser material files and set it up so that Poser could import that via the content room?

I guess if I was distributing these, for use with BB's envsphere, then I'd like to do that in a beginner-friendly manner.

I'll investigate this further I guess, once I have some more renders done ;-)

Worked fine for me...

Quote - Worked fine for me...

Very nice ;-)

I see by your system that you won't be spending the time I did trying to render this sort of image. Mine is a paltry i3 540 with 4 gig RAM running Windows HEd 64-bit, which is the best I could afford. And no, I'm not spending anything on here or elsewhere... saving up for more RAM. Unfortunately, AFAIK Vue 10 Studio (also the best I could afford) doesn't use the graphics card. Which Blender 2.63 does, when I use Cycles.

Just curious: would you be willing to post a screenshot of your render settings? I think I've been doing it wrong and getting:

...which really isn't all that usable in Poser and BB's sphere. I used settings that were suggested to me, but I must have misunderstood something.

Monterey/Mint21.x/Win10 - Blender3.x - PP11.3(cm) - Musescore3.6.2

Wir sind gewohnt, daß die Menschen verhöhnen was sie nicht verstehen
[it is clear that humans have contempt for that which they do not understand] 

Metaphor of Chooks

Offered as freebies is very appealing.  Have you considered rendering alien landscape or fantasy versions?

 

Hi Robynsveil

Attached above (hopefully) are my Vue render options, that I'm about to render with.

I've upped the dimensions to 10K pixels. Otherwise, apart from that I can't see anything different in your render settings. I'm using Vue 10 Esprit in fact, so one base version down from you... although I've ended up added some more modules to that now.

4000 pixels wide took about half a day I think... so will see what 10000 takes ;-)

Oh! Half a day. Well, sheesh, impatient me. I guess it's just the nature of the beast. I thought something wasn't right with my system.
I've been saving to both jpg and hdr when i finish rendering, just 'cuz.

Thanks for that, MonkeyCloud... that really helped.

Monterey/Mint21.x/Win10 - Blender3.x - PP11.3(cm) - Musescore3.6.2

Wir sind gewohnt, daß die Menschen verhöhnen was sie nicht verstehen
[it is clear that humans have contempt for that which they do not understand] 

Metaphor of Chooks

Quote - Offered as freebies is very appealing.  Have you considered rendering alien landscape or fantasy versions?

Yes, definitely... personally I am into a lot of retro sci fi stuff, as found in the likes of "Fantastic Stories" periodicals et al.

This book is a major resource for me in terms of that:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0450027724

In terms of Fantasy... well, I'm a big Rodney Matthews fan. Would that sort of thing be in order on that front perhaps?

Both these genres may need to wait till I've saved up and added the Botanicals module to my Vue stack though... so I can try and make up some alien / fantasy plant life, in the style of JC (James Cameron). LOL. 

Or maybe just accrued a bit more ready-made Vue content in those genres...

But sounds like a good ultimate aim ;-)

Quote - Oh! Half a day. Well, sheesh, impatient me. I guess it's just the nature of the beast. I thought something wasn't right with my system.
I've been saving to both jpg and hdr when i finish rendering, just 'cuz.

Thanks for that, MonkeyCloud... that really helped.

He he... yeah definitely a waiting game. Its rendering the whole 360 degree environment I guess. Although also, I think the displaced ocean surface probably didn't help in that last one ;-)

Anyway, I figured this would be something for Eddie (my imac) to do, whilst I was at work...

Ah, one other thing. I'm not enabling gamma correction on these currently.

That'd be right wouldnt it? On the basis that, if gamma correction is desired, then it can be added within Poser...

In fact, this gc question probably makes no odds / doesn't apply to the hdr versions anyway???

10000 pixels wide takes a wee bit longer to render. LOL. Eddie could have his work cut out ;-)

hi Monkeycloud,

questions:

1. can P8 / P9 do HDR? I thought not, so it might make sense to make a JPG / PNG package as well for those users

2. can you include a little scheme of your Vue approach and settings? This way more people can contribute to the collection while all those adhere to some standard (which is the one you set). As I'm happy to contribute as well, but I just don't have the time right now.

and indeed: please don't GC them in Vue!!

Thanks in advance, happy rendering, this will teach Eddie a lesson :)

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Usually I'm wrong. But to be effective and efficient, I don't need to be correct or accurate.

visit www.aRtBeeWeb.nl (works) or Missing Manuals (tutorials & reviews) - both need an update though

1) can P8 / P9 do HDR? I thought not, so it might make sense to make a JPG / PNG package as well for those users

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yes they do, it's also in Poser 7. ***

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okee, thanks. I couldn't check myself since my new machine only has the Pro's installed (at the moment).

- - - - - 

Usually I'm wrong. But to be effective and efficient, I don't need to be correct or accurate.

visit www.aRtBeeWeb.nl (works) or Missing Manuals (tutorials & reviews) - both need an update though

Thanks for the hdr clarification guys.

Once I've worked out a good technique I will share it.

That first one was relatively straight forward... with just a flat sea plane.

Once introducing landscape, there a few more issues like, e.g. how high should the camera be, cropping up... (technically that question applies to the sea plane too of course)

...on that point, how high should the camera be, ideally, do folk reckon??

;-)

I'd love to see one at about 15,000 ft, with fields or a coast line below..... (for a WW2 Battle of Britain pic I was working on that stalled out due to no suitable dome material...)

 

Quote - I'd love to see one at about 15,000 ft, with fields or a coast line below..... (for a WW2 Battle of Britain pic I was working on that stalled out due to no suitable dome material...)

 

Good idea Khai-J-Bach... I'll definitely give that a shot.

I'm in the process of trying to design some landscape at the moment. I'll need to expand it I think for an aerial shot... I'm working on a 50 square kilometre patch at present.

That's in terms of what is actually shaped landscape. I'm setting up an infinite plane beyond this... either of water, or just flat ground.

What about the camera placement for use in a ground level Poser scene with figures in it?

I'm thinking a camera at a height of between 2 metres and maybe 10 metres... e.g. perhaps a camera at the 6 metre mean height in that range... would give the most scope for adjusting the Poser camera to shoot figures from both slightly below and slightly above, without the envsphere backdrop looking somehow distorted?

But maybe it's not as fine as that even...

How much leeway is there in that respect, when using a spherical panoramic image like this... in terms of the Poser camera position's deviation from the spherical panorama's nodal / centre point??

A reasonable amount I guess?

For just sky, you can get away with a large amount of camera disagreement or movement within the sphere.

The trouble is when you try to point the camera down. For example, trying to place a car on the "ground" - it just doesn't look right if you deviate much at all in camera viewpoint, unless the ground is wide open.

I get away with it in Doge's Palace, as this is open courtyard and there's nothing nearby but pavement. But the Doge's Palace image is so low in resolution that it's only suitable for demonstrations - not for a published work.

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Here's a demo. Using the dolly camera, you can get really precise. I have it at 0, 12, 0 (inches), i.e. one foot above ground in the center of the sphere.

The original photo had the camera somewhere between 60 and 70 inches above ground.

The parallax disparity created by this situation is mild when you look at the buildings and sky, but rather severe with regard to the ground.

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This is why we invented the "Car Patio". You add it to hide the problem. Now you can use just about any environment easily.

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Quote - For just sky, you can get away with a large amount of camera disagreement or movement within the sphere.

The trouble is when you try to point the camera down. For example, trying to place a car on the "ground" - it just doesn't look right if you deviate much at all in camera viewpoint, unless the ground is wide open.

I get away with it in Doge's Palace, as this is open courtyard and there's nothing nearby but pavement. But the Doge's Palace image is so low in resolution that it's only suitable for demonstrations - not for a published work.

Thanks Bagginsbill... I kind of suspected this.

That issue wouldn't be there, I don't think, for a shot like Khai-J-Bach suggests... where the ground would be in the distance, down the way.

But for shot where, say there is a car or people on the ground and the camera is looking down at them, its best I guess to have a prop / set...such as your Car Patio ;-) ...providing the Poser ground... and employing some sort of trickery (e.g. a wall or balustrade or brow of a hill) to blend the extremity of that with the ground that recedes off to the horizon, as portrayed by the spherical panorama image...?

For example in Santel's image earlier in this thread, using my first test render, I presume he's used a ground plane prop with a water shader in the foreground, under the boat...? ...and that manages to blend into the sea from my Vue render.

So, I guess my concern is more how much camera position leeway there is, assuming that the foreground ground in Poser will be some sort of blended prop...

With the camera 68 inches above ground, the scene perspective and the sphere photo perspective are matching pretty closely. This is workable for a still, but don't try moving the camera in an animation. Rotate - sure, move, nope.

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We x-posted. Yes for an aerial, nothing is close and you can move and rotate the camera a lot.

The fiction that the ground is 68 inches away is the problem. In my sphere it is actually 750 feet away.

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Renderosity forum reply notifications are wonky. If I read a follow-up in a thread, but I don't myself reply, then notifications no longer happen AT ALL on that thread. So if I seem to be ignoring a question, that's why. (Updated September 23, 2019)

Someone once suggested (asked) something I'm pondering.

Is there a UV mapping trick I can do to use a flat bottom on the envsphere? It would be a true hemisphere for the sky, and a true flat object for the ground.

Been thinking about that math for a while.

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Speaking of alternative mappings - there's no reason we need super high resolution for the whole sphere.

There are at least two approaches I can think of to better make use of space and time.

Both involve having higher resolution for the part the camera can see directly, and lower resolution for the rest.

1. Use two maps - one that is the full 360 by 180 (lighting and reflections), the other that is perhaps only 120 by 60 (background). Both can still be equirectangular format. I would set up a double image shader that overlays one on the other. I see from screen shots that in View you can render any subsection at will. So you could do the full image at 4K x 2K, and the concentrated background also at 4K by 2K, but the background would look like 12K x 6K. It would have the same appearance but 1/9th the space (and time to render it).

2. Use a single map that has a new mapping that isn't homogeneous. There are many possibilities for this mapping, but the construction of it might require a new tool. I can build a decoder for it in Poser nodes. The resulting image could probably be smaller than option 1 but still have the same information as option 1. Option 1 has redundant info - the full sphere is reproducing the partial image.

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RV - your curvy horizon is the result of having the camera tilted.

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IMHO, for each HDR result it should be clearly documented how high the camera was above the ground when the render was made. Because the cam position becomes the center of the Environment Sphere, and the Poser ground level should be that amount below the center when the scene is build (by lowering the floor or raising the Sphere, whatever).

@BB: can the (Diffuse) ProbeLight node be of help? It maps the environmental HDR onto an object. Not investigated further, but might be an idea. We "only" need to map the bottom x% of the image, or so.

For the mapping math: the mapping of a portion of the botton half of the hemisphere onto a (circular) groundplane depends on the distance of the center of the hemisphere to the center of the ground plane, relative to the radius of the hemisphere of course. Not very complex, but every distance brings a different mapping which might make it an issue to implement.

RV: Camera's should be straight forward, please. Horizon, ground level, etc should be straight horizontals.

- - - - - 

Usually I'm wrong. But to be effective and efficient, I don't need to be correct or accurate.

visit www.aRtBeeWeb.nl (works) or Missing Manuals (tutorials & reviews) - both need an update though

Thanks Bagginsbill - yes, crossposted there.

I'd also been thinking along the lines of how to reduce the need to render the whole thing at that massive resolution.

For a ground level camera, the sky will always be distant.

I was thinking that for the sky, which is all pretty distant, in that style of image, rendering out at 4000px by 2000px would be plenty. Less than that may be plenty...

Rather than necessarily doing anything with UV maps I could always then blow that up to 10000px by 5000px in Photoshop and composite it with higher res foreground ground elements or whatever. Photoshops resampling would probably compensate anyway... but also I could gaussian blur the lower res sky too, to effectively upscale it?

I'm pretty sure Photoshop can retain the hdr information from the output Vue renders...

But the solutions you've proposed using dual maps or a non-homogeneous mapping sound like they'd also have the benefit of using less Poser resources?

Having the different panorama elements controlled by shader nodes could allow all sorts of other mat room adjustments too I'm guessing?

Quote - RV - your curvy horizon is the result of having the camera tilted.

Yes... thanks... I was meaning to mention I found that out too, with trial and error... camera x and z should be zeroed and y doesn't matter (I don't think).

EDIT: I'm meaning the rotation in my post above... not the position... and to correct myself, the correct terminology relative to the camera settings is Pitch and Roll... and Pitch should actually be 90 degrees... not zero. LOL. Zero faces skyward ;-)

Here's another, more straight forward ocean scene. The lo res copy is in my gallery here (click image above to link through).

There is also an hdr version available, for the time being, from the download page here:

http://bananas.monkeycloud.net/panoramas/beta/

(this link is to a page, rather than a direct link so that I can amend the locations of the actual download files later if necessary)

10,000 pixels wide was taking far too long... 4000 wide is more manageable at this stage, so I will stick to rendering at this, for now... at least until I'm sure I've got a good enough scene to be worth the wait!

So, the hdr version available from the above link is basically 4000 pixels wide, not the full 10k or 12k.

If you try out the hdr, please post back here and let me know how it goes?

I'm now working on doing some landscapes...

Cheers ;-)

I'll have a go using the hdr in Blender - let you know how Cycles like it - thanks for that, mate!!

Monterey/Mint21.x/Win10 - Blender3.x - PP11.3(cm) - Musescore3.6.2

Wir sind gewohnt, daß die Menschen verhöhnen was sie nicht verstehen
[it is clear that humans have contempt for that which they do not understand] 

Metaphor of Chooks

Cool - thanks RobynsVeil. That'll be interesting to see... at some point I will get on to playing some more with Blender... and Cycles.

I'm keeping an eye on how reddog's Poser Tools for Blender plugin is coming along... that looks like a very interesting project on the Blender front.

:-)

 

Hi monkeycloud.

Those background images are looking nice. We can always use more background images for outdoor products. If you do create some 8,000 or 10,000 wide images would you be cool with us using them in our product site renders?

Would be great to have some images with forrests in the distance or mountains in the distance, with great lighting.

bagginsbill and my self have teamed up to create some products together.

Tom AKA DreamlandModels

hi monkeycloud, looking good. What happened to your dog, testing new hair colors?

- - - - - 

Usually I'm wrong. But to be effective and efficient, I don't need to be correct or accurate.

visit www.aRtBeeWeb.nl (works) or Missing Manuals (tutorials & reviews) - both need an update though

Quote - hi monkeycloud, looking good. What happened to your dog, testing new hair colors?

He raided a packet of Skittles...

;-)

Quote - Hi monkeycloud.

Those background images are looking nice. We can always use more background images for outdoor products. If you do create some 8,000 or 10,000 wide images would you be cool with us using them in our product site renders?

Would be great to have some images with forrests in the distance or mountains in the distance, with great lighting.

bagginsbill and my self have teamed up to create some products together.

Tom AKA DreamlandModels

Hi Tom

I have procured both the Poser Chevy and the Car Patio, produced by your good self and Bagginsbill. They're very nice... looking forward to seeing more to come :-)

You guys, and anyone else who wants to, are welcome to use these panoramas in renders, both in personal artwork and in commercial product promotions. A credit for the usage would be much appreciated of course ;-)

If anyone would like to distribute the hdr source image files as part of a product package, either a freebie or a for sale item (e.g. if they have a model set and are distributing that with an environment dome part and would like to include an hdr or two to make it user-friendly) then please contact me to check what you're planning is okay by me.

In most cases I can imagine just now (e.g. the example I just gave) that would likely also be fine by me, but its probably wise to reserve the right to veto this, for now.

I guess, at some point in the future, if I get really good at these, and I produced some really deluxe versions, I may consider making some form of commercial version.

But in terms of what I'm producing on this front right now, these are all intended as freestuff... which I think is most appropriate given they're intended as an add-on for Bagginsbill's free Environment Sphere.

Once I've got a decent set of hdrs, at the most suitable resolution, I am thinking I will make a zipped package in an easily installable runtime structure, with some sort of pose file or mat file based method provided to easily apply them, and add a link in the free stuff section here, etc.

Cheers ;-)

Well, I for one will be quite keen for them, MCloud... this one sets the stage for this (by now somewhat over-worked) still-life set quite nicely:

Click for larger version

Monterey/Mint21.x/Win10 - Blender3.x - PP11.3(cm) - Musescore3.6.2

Wir sind gewohnt, daß die Menschen verhöhnen was sie nicht verstehen
[it is clear that humans have contempt for that which they do not understand] 

Metaphor of Chooks

Quote - Well, I for one will be quite keen for them, MCloud... this one sets the stage for this (by now somewhat over-worked) still-life set quite nicely

Very nice! - thanks Robynveil :-)

Out of interest, have you got some sort of focus blur going on there, relative to the background envsphere panorama image, I take it?

These are great - thanks for the ones you've released so far, and looking forward to the ones to come...

Are cityscapes a possibility? Obviously there would be a lot more work involved, but I'm wondering if Ecosystems could take care of such things as traffic and more distant buildings.

Now we have the recipe, I can try making some of these myself. 

As far as I know, yes, city builings made from eco systems is possible... and there are some eco-system compatible building models (least I think I saw some) in the Cornucopia3d store.

How these might be made if one wanted to diy-model such buildings, I'm not sure.

Conceptually, this might just be similar to the idea in Bagginsbill's current "Morphing Prop" thread...??? I don't know if Vue's trees, for example, are variated in an eco-system based on some sort of morphs...

Don't know how roads would work either... if this was a requirement... but I expect there is some clever Vue shader trick to do this... or its done with the splines feature.

...I am new to Vue too and really this idea of making spherical panoramas is a way of giving myself some impetus to play with Vue a bit more... because I have it sitting there... and it is really cool.

I've been more focused on learning Poser since I got it...

But I found myself pining for some better panoramas to use in the envsphere... hence this side project.

;-)

Quote - Well, I for one will be quite keen for them, MCloud... this one sets the stage for this (by now somewhat over-worked) still-life set quite nicely

Also, RobynsVeil, I looked more closely at the picture in the frame on the wall... that's not a Vue render too is it?

;-)

monkey, the caustic under the sphere indicates it isn't poser render. 

I tried enlarging one of these smaller hdri (~ 6000X3000, converted to jpeg) using genuine fractals trial version and they don't show too many artifacts, excepting where the image has edge transitions.  for images using just sky and ocean (smooth gradients), genuine fractals or APS bicubic would work well AFAICT, provided the horizon line is hazed over.

Quote - > Quote - Well, I for one will be quite keen for them, MCloud... this one sets the stage for this (by now somewhat over-worked) still-life set quite nicely

Also, RobynsVeil, I looked more closely at the picture in the frame on the wall... that's not a Vue render too is it?

;-)

 

It's Blender

Quote - Very nice! - thanks Robynveil :-) Out of interest, have you got some sort of focus blur going on there, relative to the background envsphere panorama image, I take it?

Thank you, MonkeyCloud. Actually, if there is 'focus blur', it's not by design.
Meaning: I just applied the image (HDR) to a 'skydome' (half a UV-sphere with a bit of the the top cut off as well), with Cycles material set to emission, strength at .5.
Camera focal length is set to 35mm, perspective, clipping 4cm to 1km (far beyond the reach of the skydome), DOF is all set to default settings (Distance: 0, Size: 0, Blades: 0, Rotation: 0, Focus set on nothing - or everything).

Sheesh, just noticed, Blender comes with a "Composition Guide" that you can superimpose on your view. How good is this, then!

Quote - Also, RobynsVeil, I looked more closely at the picture in the frame on the wall... that's not a Vue render too is it?

;-)

Actually, no, that too is Blender. :woot: The water is a 9-node material. The artist has generously made the scene available for study. You can colour me obsessed. I do realise this is a Poser forum, so I'm not going to try to seduce people over to the 'dark side' but jeez there is some cool stuff available out there. I'm just getting started: so far I haven't hit any walls - if anything, all I'm seeing is further horizons!

Monterey/Mint21.x/Win10 - Blender3.x - PP11.3(cm) - Musescore3.6.2

Wir sind gewohnt, daß die Menschen verhöhnen was sie nicht verstehen
[it is clear that humans have contempt for that which they do not understand] 

Metaphor of Chooks

Quote - monkey, the caustic under the sphere indicates it isn't poser render. 

I tried enlarging one of these smaller hdri (~ 6000X3000, converted to jpeg) using genuine fractals trial version and they don't show too many artifacts, excepting where the image has edge transitions.  for images using just sky and ocean (smooth gradients), genuine fractals or APS bicubic would work well AFAICT, provided the horizon line is hazed over.

 

Cool - thanks MissNancy. I will investigate those suggestions around upscaling...

...although, I'm also starting to make some progress towards getting scenes optimised better, I think.

My last test render with some landscape failed aesthetically... but it did complete in a reasonable 6 hours or so, at 4000 pixels wide. So that probably starts to place a 10000 pixel wide render within more comfortable reach, I reckon ;-)

Quote -
Actually, no, that too is Blender. :woot: The water is a 9-node material. The artist has generously made the scene available for study. You can colour me obsessed. I do realise this is a Poser forum, so I'm not going to try to seduce people over to the 'dark side' but jeez there is some cool stuff available out there. I'm just getting started: so far I haven't hit any walls - if anything, all I'm seeing is further horizons!

Ah, a blender render rendered within a blender render!

Thanks RobynsVeil ;-)

This thread got me to break out my copy of Vue 8 and give it a go on an existing file. Obviously it's going to need work since the scene was never meant to be rendered in panaramic 360! Click the image to open a 4000x2000 jpg.

Good stuff SteveJax. That scene looks like it could work well with some more tweaking :-)

I've been trying to set up a landscape scene with mountains, hills, sea, forming the horizon line, around the outer perimeter of the scene and a flat plane on a slightly raised tabletop style hill in the centre, where the camera is positioned... getting there, I think! 

I seem to have a fairly good shape of terrain now... just trying to get a nice ecosystem / material setup on top of that now.

I'll see how the ongoing render looks tonight. As an experiment I left it rendering at 10k px wide last night... but 6 hours later it was only at 2%. So aborted that one for now and going for another 4k px version... as I'm not even sure what it'll turn out like above a preview grade render yet!

Well As you can see I have the raised center in my scene but only have things in the distance from where the camera would see them if it wasn't taking in the entire panarama. I also need to level it out just a tad it appears. I originally rendered that at 10,000x5000 like you and it was a serious chore that took 24 hours to finish. When next I try, I'll go for the lower resolutions as well.

@Monkeycloud : I already was wondering what your system would do, when rendering a vast ecosystem forest in a 360* setup at 10.000 pix width.

As just my little parkie with some far-away trees  (http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=2275041) took 48 hours, at less than superior quality (broadcast, if I recall), at 5000x7000 size. And my machine is 25% faster too (Vue takes 8 threads / 4 cores max anyway, but I'm running at 4GHz). So a similar render at superior quality (times 2? 4?, say 3) at 10.000 (150% of my 7000) times 125% speed difference will take 48 * 3 * 1,5 * 1,25 = 270 hours (full 100% CPU load, so watch the temp).

Am I crazy? Well, if a full render takes 270 hours, then after 6 hours you will have 6/270 = 2% completion, which is what you found.

The key is: quality reduction. Do you need more than Final for this purpose? And turn ecosystems into 2D equivalents (billboarding) before the final rendering.

have fun

- - - - - 

Usually I'm wrong. But to be effective and efficient, I don't need to be correct or accurate.

visit www.aRtBeeWeb.nl (works) or Missing Manuals (tutorials & reviews) - both need an update though

Cool - thanks for the tips aRtBee... billboarding, I wondered what that was. I may have turned it on ;-)

I'm definitely inclined to think some sort of compositing of lower resolution background  with higher resolution foreground, would be the way to go for the full size...

The render time grows exponentially, beyond 4000 px and indeed as soon as the scene has more in it than just a displaced material covered ground plane and an atmosphere.

Whether the compositing is done in Photoshop... or using something from Bagginsbill's ideas around Poser shader nodes... will need to be determined.

I'd have to defer to Bagginsbill or someone else, far more knowledgeable than myself with regard to the latter though... :-)

Billboarding = render first, then put the image on a 2D plane.

Great for far-away stuff in high-res environments. You can make several layers of a different length, which makes any tiling / image repetition less noticeable. And since no Poser render will see the entire sphere at once, repeating elements can be consideren harmless.

BTW: I'll be off for some time, maybe there is some additional help in the Vue forum as well.

- - - - - 

Usually I'm wrong. But to be effective and efficient, I don't need to be correct or accurate.

visit www.aRtBeeWeb.nl (works) or Missing Manuals (tutorials & reviews) - both need an update though

Quote - Billboarding = render first, then put the image on a 2D plane.

Great for far-away stuff in high-res environments. You can make several layers of a different length, which makes any tiling / image repetition less noticeable. And since no Poser render will see the entire sphere at once, repeating elements can be consideren harmless.

BTW: I'll be off for some time, maybe there is some additional help in the Vue forum as well.

Yes - indeed - I've checked out the Vue forum a bit so far but not had anything specific to ask as yet...

...lmckenzie, I think it was, also pointed me towards the geekatplay.com Vue tutorials, a while back, in another thread... which are very good too.

Fingers-crossed tonight my current landscape render has turned out acceptably ;-)

then I might try out a Poser render myself with it... as the environment for an idea I had for Bagginsbill and Dreamland's Car Patio and a Tardis..

Thanks for these Panoramas.

I'm never sure if I'm using the sphere correctly though. Can someone verify in pp2012, I set the gamma in and out to 1.0, and on the panoramic image, I make the gamma (system) 2.2?

Quote - I'm never sure if I'm using the sphere correctly though. Can someone verify in pp2012, I set the gamma in and out to 1.0, and on the panoramic image, I make the gamma (system) 2.2?

Nice render General ;-)

I may stand corrected in due course... but I'm pretty sure you're right with those gamma settings...

Popping in late in the conversation, but "high-altitude" panoramas over terrain (or even water) would fill a massive gap that currently exists in panomaric images: there are very few around that are taken with an airborne camera (for good technical reasons).

I ran into the problem the other day when I was trying to set up a render of an aircraft in flight using IDL and the envirosphere. You could orient the image well enough to make it look like the aircraft was flying over a valley, but the reflections on the vehicle-- which you could see because the goal was to be close enough to make out the people inside through the windows--showing what was behind the camera, made it quite clear the photographer was on the ground.

Quote - Popping in late in the conversation, but "high-altitude" panoramas over terrain (or even water) would fill a massive gap that currently exists in panomaric images: there are very few around that are taken with an airborne camera (for good technical reasons).

I ran into the problem the other day when I was trying to set up a render of an aircraft in flight using IDL and the envirosphere. You could orient the image well enough to make it look like the aircraft was flying over a valley, but the reflections on the vehicle-- which you could see because the goal was to be close enough to make out the people inside through the windows--showing what was behind the camera, made it quite clear the photographer was on the ground.

Good points. I am definitely planning to try this out, as Khai-J-Bach also suggested along these lines earlier in the thread...

At the moment I am still waiting for a hilly landscape with what will hopefully look like rocks, grass, trees and lakes, to finish rendering at 4000 pixels.

Once I get that down, I could try an aerial camera view of that same terrain... as it uses an infinite terrain plane, as a test of that principle.

Then I was going to try a red desert / barren (Martian?)  alien planet of some sort I think...

:-)

It would be nice to see a step-by-step tutorial of your workflow.  I would greatly be interested to try this at home.

Quote - It would be nice to see a step-by-step tutorial of your workflow.  I would greatly be interested to try this at home.

Are you thinking in terms of setting up a Vue scene right from scratch?

Or just how to set up cameras in an existing scene and adjust the render options?

I suppose covering off scene design considerations that I am finding, relative to making a good scene for this purpose, would be also key part of any tutorial...

Quote - Then I was going to try a red desert / barren (Martian?)  alien planet of some sort I think...

Like this one? Minus the pyramid, of course... :-) 

Quote - > Quote - Then I was going to try a red desert / barren (Martian?)  alien planet of some sort I think...

Like this one? Minus the pyramid, of course... :-) 

Not far off... maybe redder soil and rock, I had in mind... with red agate like boulders in the foreground, and with some kind of alien looking, spindly, stalagmite type rocks / mountains rising from the ground off into and along the horizon line ;-)

Quote - Popping in late in the conversation, but "high-altitude" panoramas over terrain (or even water) would fill a massive gap that currently exists in panomaric images: there are very few around that are taken with an airborne camera (for good technical reasons).

I ran into the problem the other day when I was trying to set up a render of an aircraft in flight using IDL and the envirosphere. You could orient the image well enough to make it look like the aircraft was flying over a valley, but the reflections on the vehicle-- which you could see because the goal was to be close enough to make out the people inside through the windows--showing what was behind the camera, made it quite clear the photographer was on the ground.

 

If you're thinking of using such a setup for animation I think you'd fail because the closer the arcraft got to the sphere itself the more distorted the image would be. IE: The further you are from where the camera took the image the less real it would look.

When the sphere is several miles in diameter, you can move around a lot without changing perspective.

By default, my EnvSphere has a radius of 750 feet. Change the scale to 1000% (10x) and the surface is more than a mile away from you while still allowing movement within a roughly mile-wide area with little distortion.

But - you will need to increase the Yon value on the camera. This is why I selected 750 feet - so people could use it immediately without changing camera settings.  

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Oh I alway thought that was a limit in poser, is there anything negative to consider when increasing the size?

I tend to scale the envsphere up to 1000%... out of habit really a lot of the time. I'm not sure there's necessarily always a benefit in doing this?

Well, as I'm finding in a scene I'm working on at the moment, using one of these Vue panoramas I've made, I'm realising it does affect the position of the horizon line, potentially;

i.e. in the current scene if I make the envsphere 100% scale, the horizon line is hidden behind the wall of the Car Patio set.

If I make it 1000%, I can see the horizon... and therefore some of the ocean.

In terms of camera YON, I've previously found some weirdness, rendering, when trying to scale up really, really big... much above 5000% scale for envsphere, I think... see the linked thread:

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?message_id=3902706&ebot_calc_page#message_3902706

(my understanding of Poser measurement units was a bit flawed at the start of that thread by the way - and I think I've subsequently changed to measuring in inches)

 

Quote - ...on that point, how high should the camera be, ideally, do folk reckon??

Since we must choose, I think just a smidgeon above crotch height is the thing to go for. This will allow a whole standing figure (+hair) to be framed with an approximately equal amount of space above the head and below the feet when the camera is held level with the horizon.

So to put some approximate numbers on this:

0.36 PNU
944.0 mm
37.0 inch

The above is based on the height of the Antonia Polygon figure (roughly 0.7 PNU). In the attached image, the camera is horizontal. If it were any higher or lower, it would start to cut of the feet or head unless it were tilted.

Whilst the above value may be the best general compromise, it certainly would not hurt to have some variety. I sometimes have the camera at knee height or lower, this can be good for glamor, fashion, or action scenes. Or sometimes I like to have the camera at eye height, which can be good if you want to to portray interpersonal stuff between two characters. An even higher POV can be good if you want to portray a group of people, or relationship to the environment.

And I definitely agree with aRtBee, that "for each HDR result it should be clearly documented how high the camera was above the ground when the render was made", perhaps the value in cm or inches could be included in the image file name?

Thanks lesbentley... that's a good idea I think re. putting camera height into the file name.

The other thing I was considering here was whether it might be feasible and if there might be further merit in distriburing the .vue source files... maybe as part of a tutorial in due course...

Anyone using these would have to have the RenderUp module of course... plus any content assets I end up using beyond the standard content package, etc.

But still, I guess some folk may find these of use in due course...

I have switched to rendering these using the Vue batch renderer / RenderCow now... so that is now chugging along in the background producing my tests... at a slower rate... but meaning I can still get on with playing further with compositions in Vue... Posering and, of course, doing a bit of work.

Hopefully get some further results later today... ;-)

Quote - Hopefully get some further results later today... ;-)

Nope... still rendering.

Hopefully get some further results later this week... LOL.

I've gone with the 37 inch camera height suggested by Les, for the currently rendering scene, by the way.

 

Latest one... and the first with some landscape (and not much else). Well, a pretty rainbow...

 

The rock isn't quite the colour I was going for.

 

the camera height should be at 37 inches in this one...however, because we're standing on a hill, with the ground receding away down the hill, before it rises back up into the distant mountain range... well, not sure how that plays out to be honest!

 

There is an hdr version at 4000 pixels wide here if anyone wants to try that out:

 

http://bananas.monkeycloud.net/panoramas/beta/

 

Anyway I'm adjusting the landscape materials and adding some trees to this one then I'll render again.

 

I'll render the next version out at 10,000 pixels wide. Using the batch renderer that might take a couple of days or more, as processor usage is lower. But for that same reason, if it take a couple of days, it doesn't matter...

You know, I was working on doing these in Poser itself, using a ray-marching cloud shader I made. I was disgusted at the render times (couple hours for 4K by 2K) and gave up. I figured some day I'll get Vue and use that.

But your reports are telling me that Vue isn't any faster. However, it sure does more than my ray marcher.

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This is a reduced size version of one I made in Poser, using a procedural shader and doing the projection math right in the shader.

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Yup, Bagginsbill... I reckon that 10k by 5k will likely take around 4 days, maybe more, using Vue's batch render process!

However that is running on about 25% of my processor capacity. So fairly background... Poser, or foreground Vue still runs happily alongside it. As too does the Queue Manager, running at least one Poser render.

So its not problematic... aside from the wait!

Once I've got one or two down at full 10k and get a real idea of the time these are taking I think I will go back to looking at compositing... and do some tests around that... maybe on the basis of the "option 1" you mentioned back on the first page of this thread.

;-)

Quote - This is a reduced size version of one I made in Poser, using a procedural shader and doing the projection math right in the shader.

Very cool :-) As a sky, that's pretty good... and fairly comparable to perhaps a single layer of the cloud forms that are in these Vue renders?

2 hours or so is obviously a lot better than 48 hours... or indeed twice that.

But then, I guess the point of these Vue-made spherical panoramas is that they're pre-baked... its just a case of finding the best way to pre-bake them at sufficient resolution?

10K by 5K is 50 megapixels - now way around that I suppose.

If a 4K sky render takes me 2 hours, then the 10K will take at least 12.

But - that's doing it as a Poser shader. I have thought about building a custom renderer in C++ that only does this one thing - make panoramas.

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Renderosity forum reply notifications are wonky. If I read a follow-up in a thread, but I don't myself reply, then notifications no longer happen AT ALL on that thread. So if I seem to be ignoring a question, that's why. (Updated September 23, 2019)

Quote - 10K by 5K is 50 megapixels - now way around that I suppose.

If a 4K sky render takes me 2 hours, then the 10K will take at least 12.

But - that's doing it as a Poser shader. I have thought about building a custom renderer in C++ that only does this one thing - make panoramas.

Wow! That sounds like a mammoth undertaking? Had you envisaged encompassing things like "atmospherics" and so forth? Were you planning just to generate cloudcapes with it, or terrain as well?

Certainly an impressive feat to pull off if you can do this!

One thing I would say, is that part of the reason my current renders are taking the time they are is that I'm also rendering a ground plane mesh... first it was a sea plane mesh with additional displacement... and now its an elaborate "infinite" plane terrain mesh.

If I just rendered a sky in Vue, the time would be substantially reduced. Not sure by how much... but more than half, I think.

It is probably worth an experiment along these lines perhaps before I do another landscape. Just to see how long a 10k cloudscape by itself would take...

The terrain is not the expensive part - it's the volumetric clouds. The shader I wrote samples a layer of the atmosphere. Within that layer (3000 to 6000 feet) I was sampling 20 points (3D volume points of the procedural pattern) to assemble each pixel.

20 is not enough to get rid of all sampling artifacts. At 100 samples, it totally is clean, but it's very slow - obviously 5x slower. My 2K image would be 10 hours. The full size 10K would be 63 hours.

But if I built a customized renderer that did that and nothing else, I figure I can make it 1000 times faster.

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Renderosity forum reply notifications are wonky. If I read a follow-up in a thread, but I don't myself reply, then notifications no longer happen AT ALL on that thread. So if I seem to be ignoring a question, that's why. (Updated September 23, 2019)

So more like four minutes???

In that case you could build substantially more complex panoramas within a very very reasonable time!

I suppose it could perhaps, potentially be controlled by a Python script from within Poser too, which could send coordinates of your scene's "sun" light position in the sky, relative to the envsphere... would this be possible?

But I guess it all depends on how long building the custom render engine would take you to do?

Quote - So more like four minutes???

In that case you could build substantially more complex panoramas within a very very reasonable time!

I suppose it could perhaps, potentially be controlled by a Python script from within Poser too, which could send coordinates of your scene's "sun" light position in the sky, relative to the envsphere... would this be possible?

But I guess it all depends on how long building the custom render engine would take you to do?

How cool would that be. Set up the Sun /lighting where you want then make the sky to match, including the angle of the camera. Then pop it onto the sphere. How realistic is that though?

Hmmm... MissNancy has kindly checked and pointed out in another thread that the HDRs I've managed to output so far are not encompassing the full dynamic range, for some reason...

So I will need to investigate this... either I've done something silly when I've reviewed the HDRs in Photoshop (at which point I made the lower res jpeg copies) or else there is a further option in the Vue render settings that I've overlooked perhaps...

I remembered this thread from last year, and am digging it up to ask...how did it work out?  Did you make your freebies, or do the tutorial? 

you can do something similar with Bryce. I use these sometimes for renders.

W10, Ryzen 5 1600x, 16Gb,RTX2060Super+GTX980, PP11, 11.3.740

Quote - I remembered this thread from last year, and am digging it up to ask...how did it work out?  Did you make your freebies, or do the tutorial? 

I just got a handful of panoramas done so far... the big issue I was hitting was with regard to render times for getting the kind of sizes I was initially aiming for... e.g. 10-12K pixel plus wide.

My Vue install has also been screwed since I tried to apply the last service pack... and with becoming a dad again in March, I've been kind of short of Poser / Vue / 3D time too... so not had time to sort it...

...but in due course I was planning to do some more on this.

Following some discussions and one or two other threads, advice from BB, last year, I'd gotten to the point of deciding that the best approach is to make two renders of my Vue scenes... and go down a more "theatrical" route...

I've been doing a 4K wide (or less even) spherical panorama, and a hi res backdrop (e.g. in IMAX format or similar) which can be mapped on a flat rectangular (maybe slightly convex) primitive prop.

The spherical then provides reflections and IDL... the backdrop, well provides the backdrop.

The render time is much more reasonable...

Of course, this approach works for the kinds of scenes I currently do in Poser. But other folk might well be looking for a more immersive 360 environment type of thing from the spherical panorama approach...

Congratulations on your new little monkey. :-)

Quote - Congratulations on your new little monkey. :-)

Thanks EnglishBob! :)