Posted by CJ Shumate on April 12, 1999 at 16:09:34:
In Reply to: Re: Radiance Environment Mapping posted by Larry Martin on March 02, 1999 at 17:49:52:
Hello again,
Sorry it's taken me so long to describe the process in more detail. I started this project during the second half of my thesis studio (probably should have been working one something else...). So, needless to say, I got a little caught up in tidalwave of things to do and have not been able to do much since. I did, however, manage to do my studio renderings using the Radiance "envirodome" technology, some of which I hope to post eventually.
Anyway, the basic pretense is much like the DesignWorkshop Envirodomes. Using BBEdit and my .rad file, I created a large, hand-made sphere which enveloped the bounds of my model. Also, I typed out an equally large ground plane which became the water.
The dome has a texture mapped on to it that basically just looks like the pink and orange sunset you see in the image. However, the image itself is pinched in such a way that it looks fine when bent around a spherical surface. The is a calculation file (.cal) that is associated with the texture definition for mapping the sky around the sphere. This .cal file modifies the pixels of the image to account for the position of the sun in the rendering, as well as to actually wrap the image around the sphere.
The water is just a variation of the Lands-Water-Pool definition found in the DW Material Prefs file and in the dw.mat file. I made larger waves so that the scale would appear more "oceanic".
I think that's about it. I must admit, I didn't not invent this. I only discovered it from Simon Crone's own web page. He is the one responsible for authoring the .cal file, as well as creating the image maps for the sky (though this could easily be accomplished by oneself). The genius lies in the .cal file.
Anyway, I guess that's about it. Let me know if you have further questions and I'll do my best to explain.
Thanks!
CJ