Enviroment Maps

[propstuff]

You can't do it in VW in the same way that HDRI reflects off things, but I would try;

1/ take the image you want to reflect and make an Image prop out of it, turn off the auto rotate option and place it just out of sight in the "correct" position (with a mirror texture on the window), or

2/ Fake it directly by turning the image into a texture (I would distort it in Photoshop first) and apply it to the window itself.

PS; I haven't actually tried this ;-)

HTH,

N.

[ 12-20-2004, 03:41 PM: Message edited by: propstuff ]

[directive0]

Whats the easiest way to use a eviroment map to get photo-realistic reflections of scenery off windows without actually modelling scenery around them?

[Kaare Baekgaard]

I have.

If you can accept very long rendering times, the way to do this is to make a very large sphere, that encompasses the entire scene, and place it in the center of the working space.

Then make an imagemap about 3,14 times wider than it is high. Turn off shadowcasting and -recieving, and make reflection constant.

Map it ono the sphere using the cylinder mapping option, and scale it so the map is the same height as the sphere.

Make and crop the perspective view, that you want. Then draw a 2D rectangle around the croplines and turn it into a 3D polygon.

Go to side and top views and place and scale this rectangle, so it is well behind the scene, you want to render ? but inside the sphere, and so that the edges of this 3d polygon do not show up in the perspective view.

Give this 3D polygon a white texture with constant reflection and no shadowcasting/-recieving.

This 3D polygon only has the function of providing a neutral, white background in the final output.

Then render the view. The result can be extremely satisfying, but it takes eons to render.

I have requested the ability to use reflection maps as a supplement to render background in the wish list. Hopefully it will be included in the next version.

[propstuff]

quote:

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Originally posted by Kaare Baekgaard:

I have.

This 3D polygon only has the function of providing a neutral, white background in the final output.

Then render the view. The result can be extremely satisfying, but it takes eons to render.

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Very interesting Kaare!

So your scene has "envionmental" reflections, but a white background? How does it look if you leave out the white polygon?

"Eons"= more than overnight? :-)

N.

[Peter van der Elst]

I use the sphere technique sometimes as well. This way if you make fly around movies, the sky will also look more real. And you don't have the same sky background in all you renders. Maybe it's more time consuming, but the results are there.

[directive0]

I use to do that with Infini-d to get panable scenery, oh well. Guess its back to the old techniques. hhahaha, thanks guys.