Panoramic Lens Shader

[jfrancis]

After I've tiled a bunch of photos into a faceted sphere as described here:

http://www.digitalartform.com/archives/ ... pan_3.html

Is there a Mental Ray lens shader that I can access from within Maya that will let me render the faceted planes into a single continuous panoramic image, as I speculated at the bottom of my blog article?

[dlanier]

Hi,

I don't really understand why you need a panoramic lens shader ? You can't do a simple render by setting the suitable focal in our camera ?

Anyway, if you need a custom lens shader that is not too much complicated I could do it, it's usually about 1 hour to do ...
Regards,

[jfrancis]

In my articles (at the links above) I describe a process for doing pan & tile work by "stitching" separate photos together in 3-space.

If you then panoramically render those photos, you could produce single sheet panoramas simply by using a bunch of separate photos, maya, and mental ray, without any 3-rd party stitching software.

http://www.digitalartform.com/archives/ ... pan_2.html

[dlanier]

Thank you for the link. I understand the process, but actually, I don't get why you need a panoramic lens shader.
Why don't you change the focal of your camera so that the 3 planes are inside your view then render ?

Regards,

[jfrancis]

Because one needn't stop at 3 planes. That process can go all the way around and up and down until you've enclosed a spherical volume.

There is no single rectilinear lens focal length that would take it all in.

In addition, what you are describing would keep straight lines straight -- so what you are describing couldn't be described as a panorama - or even a partial panorama -- in the sense that I mean it -- it would just be a wider rectilinear lens.

[svv3d]

Create your own HDR environment map in Maya/mental ray for image based lighting

http://www.vi-motion.de/latlong_Tutorial/

[jfrancis]

That's the ticket. Thanks for the link.