• Maxon Cinema 4D

  360 Panaromic Projection on to a cylinder for virtual set?

  Posted by Mike Stewart on March 2, 2020 at 9:42 pm

  Hi,

  Forgive my lack of knowledge I am new to C4D and 3D in general.
  I have a panoramic photo, stood in the middle of a field, it wraps round the full 360 degrees. I would like to project this on to the inside of a cylinder from the bottom and centre, giving me a ground plane and panoramic backdrop so that I can drop a camera in and look around in any direction.

  My question is, how do I go about this? Will I need to create multiple projection cameras covering every direction? If so, how do I make sure the panoramic image lines up between projectors and there’s no seams? How do I split up the image evenly between the cameras?

  Thanks for your time and consideration.

  Jim Scott replied 6 years, 3 months ago 2 Members · 4 Replies
• 4 Replies

• 

  Jim Scott

  March 3, 2020 at 1:22 am

  Create a cylinder with dimensions matching the resolution of your image, turn off caps, and apply a material to the cylinder with your panoramic image added as a texture in the material’s Color channel (disable Reflectance or the image will look washed out). Set the Material Tag’s Projection to “UVW Mapping,” and set Side to “Both” or “Back” since the camera will be on the inside of the cylinder. And since the camera will be looking at the back of the image, enable Tile, and set the Length U to -100% to reverse the image so that it looks correct.

  Add a camera, zero out its position coordinates to place it in the center of the cylinder, and adjust its Field of View (Vertical) to fill the render area vertically. You can then animate the camera’s H rotation (Coordinates) to “pan” left and right as desired.
• 

  Jim Scott

  March 3, 2020 at 1:27 am

  

  

  
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  Mike Stewart

  March 3, 2020 at 11:48 am

  Hi Jim,

  Thanks for your help this works perfectly for the backdrop, however I would like to have a ground plane which meets the cylinder at the horizon line of the image. If I place a projection camera in the middle of a cylinder, and at the bottom almost touching the floor and project my image outwards it looks great. But this one camera can only cover about 1/4 of of the cylinder on the widest focal length.

  I know that if I move the action camera around too much then the illusion will break and I’ll start to see smearing of the projection, but the action camera stays in the centre of the cylinder at all times so theoretically with a 360 degree image, whichever direction I look it should not be distorted.

  So my question is, to project a 360 panoramic image from the bottom centre of a cylinder, will I need to make like 4 projection cameras facing outwards? Or is there an easier way to do it with one projection camera? If so, is there a way to split the image up between 4 so that there is no seams?

  Thanks for your time
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  Jim Scott

  March 3, 2020 at 2:26 pm

  Hi Mike,

  Since you said that you were new to C4D, my initial impression was that you were overcomplicating what you wanted to do, which I thought was simply setting up a scene to view your panoramic image “in the round.” I’m sorry for the misunderstanding. I have never tried what your further explanation describes, so when I have more time I will try to play around with camera projections and see what I find. Could you upload your current project file so that I and others could see where you’re at currently? In the meantime, perhaps someone with more experience with camera projection will provide some input.

  Good luck with the project.

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