Spherical Camera High quality render leads to low quality background

Malus

I render a spherical camera image to use as a background for a scene and no matter how high I set the settings and quality I still get a crappy background that is pixelated. I have used the png and jpg formats are the other ones better to use for something like this.

evilproducer

Since a spherical image placed in the Background wraps around Carrara's virtual universe it needs to be a very large image. The ideal aspect is twice as wide as it is tall, so maybe if you render an image at 8000 pixels wide X 4000 pixels tall, you would get a better result. You should be able to leave the default dpi at 72.

I'm only guessing because you have never mentioned what resolution(s) you have tried.

Dartanbeck

Yes. 8000 x 4000 (should be 2:1 like that) is the suggested minimum resolution. Higher is better, but even that takes a long time to render

Malus

Sweet it works thanks, why waste polygons when you can make it into a spherical map.
Anyways thanks a lot for the help

Dartanbeck

Absolutely.
And it makes the rest of the renders needing that background zip right through. One thing to always remember when using spherical (or any, actually) backgrounds in the scene settings like that is that it will always be further away than the furthest geometry in your scene - without changing scale.
What that means is that if you put a single tree in the distance, for a quick example, and there are trees "behind" it in the background, the background trees might end up out of scale to the one in the scene.
Same goes with planes and other ground surfaces. If you put in a huge plane, it will not disappear into the horizon. An infinite plane will totally hide the lower portion of the background, if it's opaque. Just some tips to consider.

For that reason, I most often make my scenes that I intend to render into a spherical map mostly vast distances away from the camera - giving more flexibility to use that background for more things - and also allowing for more camera movement and such.

One way to change that is to map that image onto a sphere and make that sphere huge - like the distance away you need it to be.
Make it so that it does not cast shadows - plus I even tell the lights themselves to ignore the sphere. Then I copy the spherical image into the glow channel and crank the brightness down to 30 and see how it looks. If I need it brighter or less bright, I simply adjust the glow channel's image brightness to suit.

Carrara has many wonderful ways to make us smile - even for scenes filled with stuff during a ten second animation!

Keep on a rockin' GR

Oh... and you should show us some of your renders when you can. I'd love to see what you're doing! :)
Cheers

Dartanbeck

Here's an Animated Backdrop where I rendered the backdrop using a camera in motion. Brought the resulting animation file into dogwaffle and added some lightning. Everywhere the lightning strikes and a few places where I lead you to believe the lightning strikes - but out of range of the camera, I brightened the whole scene for three or four tenths of a second. Then used AnyFX in dogwaffle to add rain. Back into Carrara and ran the animation in the "Backdrop" instead of background, and added the fog in motion. The motion on the trees was set in the first render.
Volumetric clouds as fog (or clouds, for that matter) can really slow down a render. Well this time it was only rendering the volumetric clouds, about four or five of them, swirling about and growing, over the animated backdrop(avi or sequenced images - I use avi) and rendered along pretty good.
Then back into dogwaffle for a final run of rain, and a little more brightening effect.

Now the scene ships (well, soon.) with that backdrop (without the character) using the same motion camera that matches the movement, and the lighting of the scene matches the brightness effect from the lightning - but with added highlights for the character - or whatever you put into the scene. It's a bonus scene for the up coming Woodlands kit for Carrara.

This one uses a distant background spherical map in the Scene settings, with a base terrain, some plant life and fog (vol. clouds, rising just above the terrain slightly).
You can see that I made the trees and terrain really far away in the background. Some of them, the trees and terrain are much closer - to where the most distant part of the terrain and trees used in this would become slightly out of scale - because they're too far away from the camera. Those are meant to have nothing in them but a character. Really fast rendering techniques.

Sorry for the babble, but I'm hoping that it sparks some ideas. I just got done doing a bunch of this - so I thought it could help :)

Malus

Well right now I'm doing game models so I have nothing to render, (I found a programmer willing to help yay, also it isn't a good idea to render things from a game you haven't made even though I may be able to considering the facts, but everything is very early in development so it wont look very good). The latest render is here http://the--grimreaper.deviantart.com/art/Just-wish-to-feel-the-sunshine-375486511 I know it isn't much but I like it, and I can feel the emotion behind it oddly enough. Sorry I couldn't show a lot of renders. I mainly been relaxing and playing around with my wife and kid since it is summer break and all that but, I have recently became game producer (4 or 5 days ago) so I have to get back to doing 3D.

Also thanks for the video, and I think you did excellent on it (I'm pretty sure it will spark something).
No probs with the "babble" we all have those moments and it doesn't bother me.

Dartanbeck

Whadya mean it isn't much? That image is totally kick ankle! I certainly know what it's like to not have images to post. Not tryin' to push ya. Just interested is all... and thanks a mil for sharing that.
That is a very complex and well done piece of art. I hope others visit this thread and have a look though that link. The contrast really hits me. Very cool!
Have fun with your wife and kid! That's my favorite thing... and my kids are grown now! lol
Congrats on the producer thing. Sounds heavy! :)
Take care and have fun with the 3d stuff. Well... and life.

Malus

Thanks, the producer job right now is really confusing cause there is only me and the programmer and we having fun trying to find a beginning lol. (The thing we are doing right now is a non profit one because it is a remake so yeah just trying to get our foot in the door)
My little girl is 3 going on 4 she is complete chaos sometimes, and other times a sweet little angel.
I never seen this life coming, I wasn't much of a ladies man more like a lady repellent, but some how I ended up with a wife and a child.
You take care and I wish you the best, and good luck with any future endeavors.