DIY - Flat-Bottomed Environment sphere

mCasual

the UberEnvironment light comprises an environment sphere

on the net there's panoramic photos which when applied to such a sphere give you a great all-around backdrop for your renders

notably the high quality images found here: http://www.hdrlabs.com/sibl/archive.html

the keyword to find suitable images is "equirectangular"

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add a uberenvironment light to your scene
in the scene tab, expand the uberenvironment node
select the environment sphere
in the parameters tab, unlock everything
change the settings so that the sphere is selectable and visible-in-renders
in the surfaces tab, of the sphere change the diffuse color to an equirectangular image
set the ambient color to white, depending on the render type you may have to reduce ambient strength
( other panoramic images can be made to work with a little tweaking
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already you can make great renders

but your character is in the center of a huge sphere, so it cant cast shadows on what you perceive as the ground level

also when your camera moves around you can see there's something wrong the illusion is broken,

the character - is not attached to a ground position at all

so lets bring the ground to shoe level

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select the sphere

create a d-form

scale the d-form field X and Z scale to 10000%

move the d-form field down to select only the lower half vertices of the sphere

scale the d-form node along the Y axis to 10 or 5 or 0 %

there, the sphere is now flat bottomed !

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you could export this as an obj file

you could scale it along the Y Axis by -100% and therefore hide the dome below ground level

you could have 1 image for the dome and 1 image for the ground

SixDs

I'll bet you used to take apart all the small appliances in your home when you were a kid, Jacques. :)

I had to cut and paste this one for future reference (things seem to get lost alot on the web these days, it seems).

This one I am definitely going to use (in Poser, too).

Thanks for the tip! What's next? :) :) :)

mCasual

SixDs said:

I'll bet you used to take apart all the small appliances in your home when you were a kid, Jacques. :)

I had to cut and paste this one for future reference (things seem to get lost alot on the web these days, it seems).

This one I am definitely going to use (in Poser, too).

Thanks for the tip! What's next? :) :) :)

next is quite a long list

- script to build mouldings/frames/handrails
- final version of the mcjCastle
- physics engine
- kinect-to-DS
- cage deformers
- 3d painting
- openGL animated water/grass ... that one is an oooold project ( 2011 )
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZAgnIGIpL88
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNzN4PxvJAg

SixDs

BTW, what you can do once, you can do twice, right? Maybe an amphitheatre with laser light show background for Amy's rock band? :)

mCasual

SixDs said:

BTW, what you can do once, you can do twice, right? Maybe an amphitheatre with laser light show background for Amy's rock band? :)

well Misstick had interesting show props in her music video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SbAYrDQStwQ

WendyLuvsCatz

I made one of those in Carrara last year
I called it a flatarsed panodome©
(copyright on MY name not the concept :lol: )
was a bit of a joke as somebody claimed he invented the concept on another forum and others chipped in that cycloramas and skyboxes had been around in one form or another for yonks.
setting it to receive not cast shadows is the other step, not sure in studio though as there you can only do both I think.

SixDs

Yeah, that intellectual property stuff can get absolutely silly at times, Wendy. The earth's atmosphere is the original skydome. Who holds the patent on that? (Probably Apple)

mCasual

wendy♥catz said:

I made one of those in Carrara last year
I called it a flatarsed panodome©
(copyright on MY name not the concept :lol: )
was a bit of a joke as somebody claimed he invented the concept on another forum and others chipped in that cycloramas and skyboxes had been around in one form or another for yonks.
setting it to receive not cast shadows is the other step, not sure in studio though as there you can only do both I think.

in DS there's a "cast shadow" property for each node
so in this example i have a distant light casting shadows but not blocked by the sphere

in blender i can use the image as a sky-light
but i can also set the painted sphere as an emitter
this way i'm sure the orientation is like what i set up in daz studio

in the end the ideal shape of the dome would be, flat up to the tree line, then a cylinder from the bottom to the top of the tree/buildings, then a sphere (or a plane?) for the sky

in the photo Amy demonstrates the word "flat" as in, "your cardboard car 'z'got a flat tire" )

mjc1016

SixDs said:

Yeah, that intellectual property stuff can get absolutely silly at times, Wendy. The earth's atmosphere is the original skydome. Who holds the patent on that? (Probably Apple)

Ummm...let's see...according to one source...

And God said, “Let there be a vault between the waters to separate water from water.” 7 So God made the vault and separated the water under the vault from the water above it. And it was so. 8 God called the vault “sky.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the second day.

And I'm pretty sure it was released as Public Domain...

SixDs

Or slightly curved where the ground plane meets the cylinder, to soften the transition?

mCasual

SixDs said:

Or slightly curved where the ground plane meets the cylinder, to soften the transition?

yes it's probably better to not flatten it too hard, the d-form can do that

someday someday i'd like to make a flat-bottom-sky-sphere-generator-script so you can tweak it to fit for example, a scene surrounded my buildings that are not too far

i'm driving only 2 wheels these days

RAMWolff

WOW... you just keep going like a happy little top! lol