Tutorial for making Environment Maps IN Blender FOR Blender?

I want to build a generic ‘space’ environment map that I can apply to Blender’s World settings for just background shots or even Environmental lighting. But I don’t know how to render the image as either an Equirectangular image or Angular/Spherical map.

I’m currently using a large, subdivided icosphere emitting a particle system of multicolored Halo particles (this gives the effect of different temperatures of stars). With a little compositing, I have some nice bright points on a black background.

Fantastic. Good start. :: Pats self on back ::

But if I save this image and bring it back into Blender as an Environment map there will be massive distortion. Does anyone have any idea how I can export this scene as a reverse-distorted image so that can be used as a map? Or name a piece of (preferably) Mac-friendly software that’ll create one for me?

Hope you can help :slight_smile:

Not sure if you already tried that, but try setting the camera to Panoramic > Equirectangular:


Then render. The result should be a 360 x 180 degrees panorama of your scene with built-in equirectangular distortion. Don’t forget to give that render a decent resolution - a too small render mapped to the whole “world” will look fuzzy (preferably the width to height ratio should be 2:1).

Ikari, thank you!

I haven’t tried that. Why? Because I’m working in Blender internal, and that option isn’t there >:(

I use BI because Cycles doesn’t handle volume procedural textures yet (come on. 2.72) and I use volume procedurals quite a bit. But I’ll try converting the scene and see what happens. Thanks again :slight_smile:

Hmm. BI still has a Panoramic botton, but without the additional “Type” selector. Before painfully converting the scene to Cycles, see what happens with the BI camera set to Panoramic!

Just tried it. No luck. I get a panorama., and it’s dependent on image dimensions and field of view.

I guess I have to fiddle with field of view, lens distortion and other things to get this working. I was hoping this had been tried before, and someone left instructions.

Drat. I’ve never gone into Cycles before. Node editing’s going to be hell to re-learn :confused:

About panoramic (equirectangular) in BI.
Try using 5.6 mm lenses.
However, a possible bug there. It behaves a little different under OSX and WIN.