Best way to render hi-res spherical maps

ueany

Hi there,

Sometimes I want to make spherical mapped renders (equirectangulars) with Bryce. Those renders should be at least 16 bpc and hi-res, the higher the better.

I know several ways to render spherical maps:

- Viewport rendering with the Spherical Mapper from Horo and David: Gives only 4000 px in width (because Bryce limits), but I need at least 6000 to 10000 px in width (my photographed spherical panos always have at least 10000).
- Render to disk would provide larger images but can't be used for 16 bpc as it's buggy and doesn't work.
- The only way I see so far is to render the sphere as a skycube where each face of that cube can have up to 4000 px and of course that higher bit depth when rendered in the viewport and saved immediately when the render is finished. 6 cube faces with 4000 x 4000 px each would result in a equi around 12000 px wide - fine! But you have to do this manually because the cube faces can't be rendered out as an animation as Bryce only outputs BMP which is not enough bit depth.

The last way would work but it's very time consuming because you have to start and save every cube face render manually to get 16 bpc.

Any ideas for a better way?

Thank you

Horo

@ueany - no better idea, I'm afraid. If I have to do spherical panos larger than 4000 px wide, I also render cube faces and transform them to spherical - this gives me around the 12,000 x 6,000 as you mention. If I need better dynamic resolution, I export as 96-bit TIFF - I do this also when I fake an HDRI (and merge them with Picturenaut). To transform them to spherical, I use Pano2VR, the pro version can handle HDRI. Tedious ... :roll:

ueany

@Horo: Thank you anyway. I already was afraid that there is not better way unless DAZ gives as a renewed Bryce but I don't think that this will happen. Anways, because of Pano2VR: Are you sure only the Pro version can handle HDR? Regarding this comparison (bottom of the page) also the standard version can handle them.

Horo

@ueany - Strange. The page lists version 4.1.0 but I have an old one 4.5.1 and there are no updates available. You're right, I've confused it with PTGui which I use as a stitcher but it can't do cube faces. Here, only the Pro handles HDRI. Sorry for the confusion.