Creating Spherical backgrounds

zug22

Anyone know how to create a spherical background image for use in DAZ Studio from a 3D model?  They are soo useful yet nobody seems to talk about them.

I would prefer if it was using Blender since that is my modelling tool of choice but any info or preferrably a tutorial would be great.

Thanks!

 

Horo

There are many ways to create a spherical background. You can photograph a real scene using a mirror ball and transform it to spherical or take individual shots and stitch them together (I have some information on my website under Raytracing as well as under HDRI & Panoramas). You can also render a scene using a mirroring sphere or set the camera FOV to exactly 90° horizontal and render the 6 cube faces and assemble them to a spherical panorama. With Bryce come tutorials showing 4 methods how it can be done. You always need an external program, either to transform or to stitch. There is a product for Bryce (Spherical Mapper), a "lens" you can put in front of the Bryce camera and render directly a spherical panorama, though it is limited to 4000 x 2000 pixels. I don't know Blender good enough so I cannot tell you whether you could create a "lens" in it to render a spherical panorama or the camera can be set to a horizontal FOV of 90° that renders without distortion.