Spherical map with yafaray and pfstools

[condar]

it's more like a tip than a whole tutorial . ..remember to install pfstools (or qtpfsgui if you don't like to work in console)

http://pfstools.sourceforge.net/
http://qtpfsgui.sourceforge.net/

1.- First we need to render an Angular map, changing the camera type to ... guess what... Angular . "Angle" and "Max Angle" set to 180 and don't forget to check "Mirrored" and "Circular" buttons.

2.- The render must be a square image so change the resolution in Blender. In the example is 1400x1400.

3.-Render and save in any format you want but EXR and HDR will let you use the image later as IBL. (Make your own Light Probe images is really easy . )

4.- in console you just need to go to the folder where the angular image is saved and run the command

"pfsin [angularmap name] | pfspanoramic angular+polar -i -o 5 -y 0 | pfsout [spherical map name]"

in the example I run

pfsin angularmap.exr | pfspanoramic angular+polar -i -o 5 -y 0 | pfsout spherical.jpg

* if you want to resize the image just change "-y 0" for "-y W" where W is the final image width in pixels (in the example -y 700 will produce the same spherical map but at half size)
* "-o 5" is for oversample factor. normal values are 3 to 5

5.- The Spherical map can be open with any Panoramic viewer.. I tried PTviewer and FSPviewer.


Now... for all you guys that really hate to work in console, Luminance 2 (known as Qtpfsgui) will make your life easier, but you will need to work with HDR images (exr or hdr). Just open the angular.exr and then go to Edit -> Projective Transformation. and set:

Source Projection: Angular, Destination Projection: Polar, Oversample 5 and click OK
after that you can make tonemapping and save as PNG or JPG.

[black]

Hi condar,
could you please write in a few words how did you create the scene for rendering in your example?

[condar]

camera at (0,0,1) pointing to Y+ , a plane at (0,0,1) on the origin and scaled to get a ground, Darktide Sunsky for the background, any 3d model you want around the camera to get a reference

[black]

Thanks a lot, condar! I think now I know everything to make something similar.