How to convert panorama photos to cubemaps?
polycounter lvl 9
Hello there!
Today I downloaded this one app for iOS called Photosynth which creates full panoramic photos (including top and bottom) and then you can view it all applied to a sphere, so you can rotate the camera around. Very neat stuff. The quality isn't perfect, but unless you're making some sort of chrome-like material, the cubemap would most likely be blurred or distorted anyway, so it shouldn't matter much. Of course, usually I would use the in-game RTT cubemap, but for other uses (like real-time viewing using Xoliul's Shader, etc..) it could come in handy.
Now, what I'd love to do is use these panorama photos as cubemaps, but I don't know what would be the fastest (and cheapest!) way. I thought about applying the photo as texture for a sphere and then placing a cube inside and try projecting all the sides, but it sounds like the quality wouldn't be quite the best, and I could potentially get some ugly distorting.
I also found this: http://www.outerspace-software.com/bixorama.html
Which apparently can import and export into many methods, two of which are Latitude Longitude (ie, the pics taken with the iPhone camera) and Horizontal Cross (the commonly used cubemap layout). But there's only a trial and then you have to pay, which I'd do if there's nothing else out there, but I hardly doubt it! :P
Anyway, if any of you got an idea, please let me know!. I bet some other people here would love to be able to do the same.
Today I downloaded this one app for iOS called Photosynth which creates full panoramic photos (including top and bottom) and then you can view it all applied to a sphere, so you can rotate the camera around. Very neat stuff. The quality isn't perfect, but unless you're making some sort of chrome-like material, the cubemap would most likely be blurred or distorted anyway, so it shouldn't matter much. Of course, usually I would use the in-game RTT cubemap, but for other uses (like real-time viewing using Xoliul's Shader, etc..) it could come in handy.
Now, what I'd love to do is use these panorama photos as cubemaps, but I don't know what would be the fastest (and cheapest!) way. I thought about applying the photo as texture for a sphere and then placing a cube inside and try projecting all the sides, but it sounds like the quality wouldn't be quite the best, and I could potentially get some ugly distorting.
I also found this: http://www.outerspace-software.com/bixorama.html
Which apparently can import and export into many methods, two of which are Latitude Longitude (ie, the pics taken with the iPhone camera) and Horizontal Cross (the commonly used cubemap layout). But there's only a trial and then you have to pay, which I'd do if there's nothing else out there, but I hardly doubt it! :P
Anyway, if any of you got an idea, please let me know!. I bet some other people here would love to be able to do the same.
Replies
EDIT:
CubeMapGen might come in handy too.
EDIT2:
Might as well mention this from the free apps thread since it's sort of related:
EDIT3:
Eric Chadwick also mentions a way to do it using Max in this tutorial.
If anyone is ever interested, I could create a mini-tutorial one of these days (I'll go and make a panorama photo somewhere outdoors, I used my living room for this test) and put it on my website or something
I hope you do realised that despite that guy found out how to do it, it was without your help because everything you suggested in this thread does not answer the topic.
Oh, where as your only post in this thread was a fountain of fucking knowledge.
Oh and from the way it reads, the solution to the problem was derived from the last link that Ben posted?
Here's a thread for suggestions.