map panorama to surface

[sfaust]

All,

I have a panoramic photo of a site as well as some geometric data of the site (created as a ground plane surface). I need to map the photo to the surface it it's real position. My first attempt was to use a spherical UVW map and center the gizmo where the picture was taken from. However, it just seems to stretch the map in strange ways and give awkward breaks, etc. Is there a better way to go about this?

Thanks,
Steve

[METANAMORPHOSE]

Hello,

What do you do exactly?
If you want to include buildings in a photo, you have the tool: Camera Match (http://forums.augi.com/showthread.php?t=105193)



Or do you put your picture panoramic environment? (hdri type)?

Bien à toi
Michaël

[loydg]

Steve,

Your first approach sounded good in theory. I probably would have started there too. My initial thought is that any time you use a sperical or any other type of projection mapping, you will get some weird artifacts on surfaces that are not perpendicular to the projection. Usually it's just unavoidable.

One thought would be to use the mapped pano in the distance and general mapping techniques in the foreground with maps that can segway from the background. Typically I use panos (HDRIs) for the background image and satellite aerials for the terrain. You can download free satellite aerials from http://seamless.usgs.gov/index.php but resolution will be dependant on coverage. bare in mind that the site is incredibly slow.

You could also use a camera map modifier and break up the terrain and pano, but it would be complicated to get the seams correct and you would still have some weird stretching in the foreground. Adding geometry may fix some of that.

I guess the big question is if your final camera will be locked down or animated...

[sfaust]

Thanks for the tips. I'm checking out the site you posted to see if that will work. The initial problem with using "normal" textures is that this particular application needs to be pretty acurate to reality (and sometimes reality during a certain span of time) hence the desire to use the panoramic photo. I will map it in the distance as well probably as a background, but I also need it on the surface.

As for the camera, it will be animated but only in a relatively small and defined area.

Interestingly, I played with it a little more and the initial idea may work better than I thought. I started with just a simple box to try and map something onto the top surface just as a proof of concept and that was where I was getting the weird stretching (and when I say that, I mean like a diagonal line accross the surface and nothing but streaks beside it). However, just out of curiosity I put a FFD4x4 on it and mades oem minor modifications to the surface, keeping it mostly flat. After that, it seemed to map as expected....