Rendering a skybox cubemap with DAZ Studio

vincent-2350395

I have created a scene in DAZ Studio and i wanted to render a skybox cubemap of it, something along the lines of this:

http://raptor.developpez.com/tutorial/opengl/skybox/images/cube_map_final.gif

The camera is already in the proper position (center of the scene), but i have no idea how to export a cubemap from DAZ Studio. Is there a plugin i can purchase or a special script?

AndyS

Hi Vincent,

some time ago I found the description how the texture map for a cube has to look like.
So, it is not my own and I don't know where I found that. I hope the original autor don't mind that I show it here.

Now you have to change your picture to get it fit to the DAZ3D sky-cube object.

Yours
Andy

vincent-2350395

I guess you misunderstood my question: i want to render my scene into a cubemap, not import one. I have a nice cityscape scene with some terrain and i want to export it as a cubemap.

Gusf1

Could you render 6 different views at precise rotation and keeping the render settings the same? Could you then paste them together in a image editor to create your layout? I don't know much about these, but that's what i'ld try.
Gus

AndyS

Hi,

these 6 necessary views are already prepared in DAZ.
But at first you have to guarantee, that your complete scene is centered around the origin.

In the attached picture of my previous post you see the view/camera selection in the top left corner of the workpane. This also contains pulldown entries with "Front View", "Left View", "Right View", ...
And of cause the dimensions of your render area have to be a square. ;-)

Now you only have to put the 6 render results into the right positions of your cubemap using any external graphic program.

Is it this you asked for?

Bejaymac

What you are after is something that can render HDRI environment maps, but rendered as cube mapping rather than spherical mapping, I don't think 3Delight is capable of doing that never mind DS.

Takeo.Kensei

Bejaymac said:

What you are after is something that can render HDRI environment maps, but rendered as cube mapping rather than spherical mapping, I don't think 3Delight is capable of doing that never mind DS.

Of course 3delight can do that. But that is not the question here.
The question here is wether it is possible to bake a render as a cubemap

There is actually no tool to do that, but that is doable

You should create a shader in shadermixer that will bake reflections into a texture.
The difficulty is to get the right views and coordinates for that

AndyS

Hi Takeo,

the necessary, non-perspective views do exist, of cause. Please see my previous post.
And the question of the coordinates for the camera is easy as well. You first have to think about the useful distances and than simply count the mouse-wheel clicks when adjusting the distance. The big pitty is: the 6 predefined non-perspective views don't offer editable coordinates.

But yes, and that's what I stated as well, you have to build the skybox with an external graphic program (PSP, Photoshop, ...). There isn't any tool within DAZ.

Takeo.Kensei

@smftrsd72 : Hi

I read your post but I wouldn't do it that way.

Just render once by baking a reflection shader to a texture

And I'd rather bake from a sphere on a long/lat map, then convert to cubemap with a third party tool

Should be easier to do it that way and without to mess with spherical coordinate conversion on the cube