Help with rendering skybox in Max

lkraan

Does anybody know if there's a plugin or routine that allows you to render a skybox (6 images: top,bottom, left,right,front,back) from a Max scene.
This scene has a camera going through scenery and I want to have a set of 6 skybox images for every frame of the scene's animation.

motives

im sure this doesnt answer your question but why not jus map the images to a inverted cube and place your world inside it?

Joshua Stubbles

The closest thing I know of is the panoramic exporter in max, though it only renders sphere/cylinder maps.

You can always just do it manually, as well. Set the camera to have a FoV of 90, and rotate camera in 90 degree itereations yourself.
I've done this for cubemaps, and it worked great.

KMan

In a new material, put a Reflect/Refract map into any slot (doesn't matter where). Check the 'from file' button, so it enables the render bottom panels. Size = each view's render size. If you have any atmospheric effects set up, use the values there, or you can have it pull from a camera.

Click on the To File to tell it where to dump the files and what name to give them. then click the 'pick object and render maps button' and click on a camera or object you want it to render from (this'd be your origin point) and you are done.

Eric Chadwick

Yeah, KMan's method works great, I use it a lot.

But it sounds like lkraan you want to have multiple skyboxes, one for every frame. KMan's method will only do one frame.

How are you going to use the skyboxes? As a background for a separate rendered scene? As a reflection map for a surface in another scene? Some other purpose?

One way I've done animated skyboxes was to set up six cameras, and use Video Post to render the animation from each of them. Not fun, but works. Then you load each sequence into the slots of a Reflect/Refract map, and use that map as your background (or reflection map).

lkraan

Thanks for the feedback guys.

The 6 skybox images per frame of the animation is needed to calculate the evironment/dynamic light of the scene. I can't really say much more about it

The panoramic exporter doesn't do the trick but linking 6 cameras to the main camera might be the quickest way to do this.

EarthQuake

Theres also a program you can use to compile those maps into a .dds qubemap, but i cant remember what its called offhand, i think it comes with the directx SDK.

Eric Chadwick

Gotcha lkraan.

Well, if the cubemap is just a render of the rest of the same scene, and you'll be using it for another surface in the same scene, then you can just put a Reflect/Refract map on the surface and set it to Auto, let do all the rendering and the texturing. But... you'll probably get bad edges on the cubemap if you do any filtering on it. Best to pre-process it then.

Here's the scene I use to render cubes via cameras.
http://www.ericchadwick.com/examples/files/cameras_six_for_rendering_cube_views.zip
It's a Max 7 file. Render via Video Post <shudder>... I really hate Video Post...

lkraan

Thanks Eric! Hadn't thought about rendering all cams at the same time via video post.