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Smattila β View from above
Published: 2010-11-02 16:01:52 +0000 UTC; Views: 14425; Favourites: 199; Downloads: 1387
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Description
Been developing a pipeline to get these things with a click of a few buttons. Spent like 8 hours working and researching to get it done with terragen2 and other apps.Now I can render these out rather quickly tho the resolution requirement increases render time a lot..
Expect more of these in the future!
And yeah as Tadp0l3 said I think I need to point out that its a flash file and you can pan around xD
Please note that this is just a test and not an actual proper work
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Comments: 160
At first I thought "How?!?!", and then it ended up with 
Great job you've done!
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I was leaning back in my chair for like 40 minutes, then when I saw you can scan the piece, I about did a front flip through my screen. One thing though, I cantt faaaaave iiiittttt!!!!!
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I know. It covers up the fave button. 
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Haha. I think some people wont even try to touch the image so they might not even know its pannable
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You made my day with this.. this is the epitome of epicness!
kudos my friend!
PS: How can I download this to my PC?
When I click on the download link, a second tab with the same image opens up.
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Thanks! If you rightclick the download and push save as file you should be able to download it
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When i first opened this up, for a minute i thought it was just a 2d render, man was I surprised 
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Haha thanks man. I'l try my next render on ground level with some vegetation or something. Not sure yet
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Glad I'm watching you 
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Oh and remember to render the cubes in high resolution. I had 2048x2048 cubes here and I think they could've been even higher..
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Actually the idea is rather simple. You just render 6x 90 degree images of your scene. Effectively covering 360x180 degrees and then you pile up the images in f.e. HDRShop or Pano2QTVR, the latter one can render Quicktime VR format and flash. It's not really much more complex than that. It just took me a whole day to figure out which programs can handle cubes and transform between different formats
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This is seriously fantastic dude, I love it. I'm actually looking to start a project with *AndreeWallin and `adonihs on a sort of galactic tour, using matte paintings and After Effects for animation. One thing I'm having trouble with is getting panoramas to pan and tilt on, without utilizing 3D renders.
I don't know if you'd have any idea on how to deal with that, but when the time comes that we have enough free time to work on the project, do you think you'd be interested in helping us with some shots?
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Also if the sphere like skydome produces trouble one option would be the inside of a cylinder where you dont have the distortion of a ball
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Thanks. Sounds like an interesting project. I'm not very familiar with after effects but couldn't you make that with a skydome? You just basically project the panorama into a inverted sphere. Im not sure what kind of panorama we are talking bout here but the FOV is very crucial in getting it right. There are several other options too but Im not sure if they would work here..
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I actually have a script for After Effects that lets me project a panorama onto a cylinder which is fairly useful, but it's also a bit tricky to get right.
I'm unfamiliar with Terragen 2, so I'm looking for a sort of way to create a panoramic matte painting, without necessarily having a full CG render. Any ideas on how I might be able to create a template to paint into for an above planet shot with a pan/tilt involved?
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Yeah I understand. The template would be very tricky, atleast for a 360x180 degree image like this. Check these 3 images and you know why: [link]
Basically you can switch between the tile formats, there are several ones that programs understand and you can swap between each of them, even the equitangular but none of them is really easy to paint on. The tile types would be easiest due no distortion, but the seams between tiles are not easy to get right.
I'd say the best way is still to project the image in to a inverted sphere or a cylinder, or you could try making a template in the tile format and paint into that, which is still very very challenging.
I tried to look how to make a skydome in after effects and it seems that there is some scripts but they cost money. I found this video which demonstrates one of them: [link] Im not sure what would be the best approach here but that thing might be worth researching
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Yeah, that does look pretty tricky, so I'm even more impressed now that you pulled it off.
As for using a skydome, I have no problem doing one in 3ds max, After Effects is just what I'm using for final compositing. I'm just not as familiar with max as I am with AE. It probably doesn't matter anyway, because if I'm going to composite other elements, it's easiest to render out the image first, because dealing with everything in 3D layers is a headache.
As for that script, I might check it out. I have another one from that site for the cylinder, and on some of them, including that skydome one I think, they let you name your own price, so I give em like a penny, rofl.
Do you think if I were to attempt a matte painting in the shape of the equitangular render I could pull it off? That in itself is a relatively good template, it'd just be a matter of getting proper perspective on the clouds and such. Plus, I doubt I'd use a shot so extensive that I'd need a whole 360 degrees.
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Here's a small render showing 3 images covering 180x90 degrees [link] It doesn't contain much distortion so I'd think this is much easier to work with and to project on a surface..
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Sorry on the late reply, got backed up. I'll have to try something similar to that then, it does seem easier to deal with, but I guess my main problem is projecting it. Is there a specific way to go about it, or do you just scale it until it looks about right?
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There is another way that might work, and I'll try this once I finish something else too, since tons of my future ideas rest on it working
I'm not sure of Terragen 2 or 3D studio Max can do this, but if they can render it as that "scary" equitangular format like Vue can (since that's what I'm using) then maybe paint all the separate major elements of the scene individually and project them onto alpha planes all around the camera, and have all of them facing towards the camera with the materials/lighting set so some don't come out too flat-looking, and render it and it may look good. If I were to do this exact one, I would have made all planets/comets/galaxies etc in Photoshop, project onto alpha planes against a solid black background in Vue and make sure they all face the camera perfectly front-on, and they should render with the right amount of "warp" no matter where they are 
One could still paint over the rendered panoramic view afterwards, but the closer you get to the top and bottom of the image, the harder it'll be to paint with the increasing amount of distortion in those areas, so those areas especially will have to come out practically perfect in 3D, the middle (which is the most important part) is a bit more free to postwork.
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The equitangular format is a pain in the ass to paint in due all the distortion around the edges of the image. I would not try it personally and I think you should not either.
Anyway..How high FOV do you think you will need? If you dont need a full circle, lets say for example 180x90 degrees. It would be possible to paint into this and also project the image into a cylinder. If you have high enough resolution you could use a camera with FOV, lets say f.e. 50 degrees. This would leave you lots of room to pan around. Even with FOV of 90 degrees you'd still have twice the room of an image. 90 degrees is effectively 18mm in full frame film which is quite serious wide angle shot.
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Yeah, I'm not looking for something that's super wide angle or anything like that. I don't know enough on lenses yet to be honest, just some pretty basic stuff. I just want it to look like a pretty straightforward shot. I don't mind a little distortion, but too much on a spherical body will just throw the whole thing off.
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I just had an idea while trying to get some sleep...You can actually paint into a skydome in 3d coat. The program has all the same tools as photoshop in the painting room. You can even import the brushes from photoshop...
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Interesting, I've never heard of it. I'll have to check it out, thanks a lot dude.
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Dude are you serious? You just took space art to a whole new level. I hate you.
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lol dude. It's not that interesting really. Making a proper composition and a plot for a scene like this is a disaster xD
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I recognize the difficulty in creating an interesting scene in this fashion, but think of the rest of us. Pretty soon a static image won't be enough for anyone, all people will want will be explorable scenes.
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WOAH!!!
Looked at it so much I got dizzy!!!
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That's the shit bro. This is freaking awesome
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I thought that's a picture, i wanted to zoom in and BAM! I was shocked, haha. This is beautiful, great idea!
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really cool. I wish it didn't distort so much though
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Yeah the default FOV of 70 degrees was a bit much but the resolution of the skycube didnt allow small fov. Im going to render the next scene with highres since I actually got this approach working. I worked on this crap like 8 hours xD
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It's really impressive
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