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How do I make an Environment Map for BLUE?
Is the procedure for making an Environment Map for Boris BLUE documented anywhere?
Here is how far I got: I can see that they are DirectX DDS files and I’ve downloaded the NVIDIA DDS Plug-in for photoshop and so I was able to open the DDS file from BLUE and see that it was made up of a cube with 6 sides of 512×512 each. I then took an environment that I had created in Vue 6 Infinite and exported 6 camera angles (0, 90, 180, 270, straight up, & straight down) at 512×512 resolution and assembled them into a DDS file in the same order that the BLUE files were arranged. But in BLUE it was pretty obvious that the projections didn’t match as I could see the corners of the cube. 🙁
I’m thinking that I need to change the focal length of the camera I am using to create the images in Vue. The BLUE environments look like they were created with Terragen. How were they created?
What is the secret to getting the 6 projections to be seamless when, in reality, they are being projected onto a cube with corners?
~jr
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3 Replies
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Hi John,
Your camera settings in Vue should be set to 90 degrees for field of view and a square format like you already have. Since the environment doesn’t respond to lights the edges and corners are invisible if the map is seamless.
The maps we created were done with the ATI cube map utility.
https://ati.amd.com/developer/cubemapgen/index.htmlThis application lets you import, assemble, and preview environment maps. I’m fairly certain that Vue (at least Infinite) allows you to export cube cross environment maps which would be the best way to go if you use the ATI utility.
Thanks,
Dave -
Hi Dave,
You Rock! CubeMapGen is da’ bomb!!!
90 degree FOV was the ticket and with CubeMapGen I could see where else I went wrong. What I didn’t realize was that the images are reversed. It makes perfect sense now that I think about it because you are looking from the inside out. When I mapped my images manually I was actually mapping them to the outside of the cube so each image was backward when looking from inside the cube. Duh! Once I flipped them in CubeMapgen it all fell into place seemlessly.
You are right. This utility makes it easy peasy. I have my first Environment Map working and it looks awesome. Thanks so much for your help. I can now build environments in Vue Infinite and use them in BLUE.
~jr
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and of course the same cube maps can be used in a material with reflection as the reflection map
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