MOAB Spherical Light Map

RobStanley

RobStanley

Joined
Dec 27, 2006
Messages
6,710
I've been busy getting ready for Boar in recent times so not much activity on here. I have been creating spherical HDR light maps to use in out virtual lighting systems for the CG components of the film. Here's one with my MOAB.

tumblr_nro8xqNkF01siuc9oo1_1280.jpg
 
Okay, I'll bite. When I read "Spherical Light Mapping" I thought to myself, "Self, you don't know what that is."

I googled it, and came across a Wiki Page that stated: "In computer graphics, environment mapping, or reflection mapping, is an efficient image-based lighting technique for approximating the appearance of a reflective surface by means of a precomputed texture image. The texture is used to store the image of the distant environment surrounding the rendered object."

Don't get me wrong, I love the knife... but now I have to know what spherical light mapping is. Would you be so kind as to enlighten me?

Thank you!

-Nakago
 
Nakago1 said:
Okay, I'll bite. When I read "Spherical Light Mapping" I thought to myself, "Self, you don't know what that is."

I googled it, and came across a Wiki Page that stated: "In computer graphics, environment mapping, or reflection mapping, is an efficient image-based lighting technique for approximating the appearance of a reflective surface by means of a precomputed texture image. The texture is used to store the image of the distant environment surrounding the rendered object."

Don't get me wrong, I love the knife... but now I have to know what spherical light mapping is. Would you be so kind as to enlighten me?

Thank you!

-Nakago
Click to expand...

The wiki page you quoted is pretty much it. It plain English though it's something like this - The image can be used as a texture to wrap around a sphere in a 3D animation program. The image will wrap perfectly on the sphere, and you surround your entire scene with it, thus creating your virtual 'environment'. The textured sphere is used to create the virtual lighting for whatever animated objects you have in your scene. It's a great way to match real world lighting when rendering animated 3D objects. For example, I might want to create a shot of a spaceship landing in a field. I would film the real world field with nothing happening in it. I would then make one of these light map images of the field location and use it in a 3D animation program to light the scene of an animated spaceship landing. I would render it out and composite it with the real world footage I took, and it will look like it's part of the shot. All because the lighting on the spaceship perfectly matches the film footage. I hope this makes sense! :)
 
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RobStanley said:
The wiki page you quoted is pretty much it. It plain English though it's something like this - The image can be used as a texture to wrap around a sphere in a 3D animation program. The image will wrap perfectly on the sphere, and you surround your entire scene with it, thus creating your virtual 'environment'. The textured sphere is used to create the virtual lighting for whatever animated objects you have in your scene. It's a great way to match real world lighting when rendering animated 3D objects. For example, I might want to create a shot of a spaceship landing in a field. I would film the real world field with nothing happening in it. I would then make one of these light map images of the field location and use it in a 3D animation program to light the scene of an animated spaceship landing. I would render it out and composite it with the real world footage I took, and it will look like it's part of the shot. All because the lighting on the spaceship perfectly matches the film footage. I hope this makes sense! :)
Click to expand...

Great explanation, it prevents the horrible, most obvious, green screen effect of a plain as day cartoon over real life footage. Smart cookie robstanley
 
And I can barely work a "smart" phone😥

I don't know if that's hard to do or not but to a guy like me that sounds like rocket science, which makes me glad that there are guys like you who can figure this stuff out because that picture is awesome!
 
1AbominAble1 said:
And I can barely work a "smart" phone��

I don't know if that's hard to do or not but to a guy like me that sounds like rocket science, which makes me glad that there are guys like you who can figure this stuff out because that picture is awesome!
Click to expand...

I am with you. All greek to me. I just figured out how to text via talking to my phone.

Garth
 
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