EDIT - Start
OK, I just found this topic:
http://www.thearender.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=93&t=9739&start=10
So I think nigec's .doc file there will answer alot of the following.
EDIT - End



I'm trying to understand this thread , and this question probably won't make any sense. Its embarrassing to pose the question since you guys seem to have got it so easily, but here goes...

I've looked at nigec's r2d2 scene - still not sure what it is showing. But looking back at chrisapeze's scene...

So am I right that everything in christapeze's car plus gingerhouse scene EXCEPT the car was previously rendered so as to get some sort of bitmap representing the background (kitchen + gingerhouse + tablecloth)?

And the only real meshes in Christrapeze's scene is the toy car and (possibly?) a plane with the tablecloth somehow mapped onto it?

And whatever camera and lighting christrapeze used to render the background needs to remain untouched when rendering the scene with the car ? I know I'm way off base..

Or where have I gone wrong. I really need some basics here...

Thanks!

Here's a quick tutorial

thanks Nigec,,



Dave yes thats correct, and i think i would only need a mask if i wanted to make the plastic table cloth under the car glossy but not the whole scene ie kitchen and ginger bread house
then i used the same rendered bitmap with projection set to front as a bump map
to make the roof of the ginger bread house catch the sun and creat some depth on the house
and roof, so it was not so flat

Thanks for the examples nigec, and the shrink wrap explanation from Giannis. Most usefull and ripe for manipulation.

I was having trouble working out the shrink wrap but i think the penny has now dropped.

Are all these offshoots/benefits of the C4D plug in development?

thanks for the tuto and the scene nigec. Helpful.

Your welcome

Yeah its a gold nugget from the C4D plugin, and I'm sure more and more cool features will be spawned by other plugins

Thanks for the .pdf nigec. It must be the .pdf version of the .doc you had posted in a previous thread. With that and christrapeze's replies I have now 'got it'.

Since I don't have many wraparound .hdr's, I used a plain photo I had of a castle with a big lawn in front of it. I made that photo a material and put it on a large vertical plane. I zoomed in on the plane to frame the view I would want. I rendered it with spherical camera at high resolution (4000x3000) and saved it as an hdr. The image looked like just a section of sphere with alot of sky around it.

I started a new Thea file and picked up nigec's .pdf and proceeded as if I had a 'real' wraparound hdr. Of course, my hdr wouldn't work for 360 degree camera rotations, but it worked for the view I wanted. I was able to match the sun/shadows to my original photograph, and placed a cube on lawn in front of the castle. Very passable result for a quick trial.

Thanks again. Lots of potential here.

Thanks Nigec. I guess frontal projection could be easily explaned to SU users - it is like PROJECT PHOTO from Photo match feature. Right?

Pretty much so.

hi,
frontal projection is a really cool feature. you can project a picture that is parallel to your viewport to any object in the scene.
the downside is that when ever you turn the render-camera, frontal projection textures follow up.
with Camera mapping (also known as Matte painting) the projection is controlled by a camera, and the projection is fixed & parallel to that camera.
it's more advanced than frontal projection as it gives you the advantage to move or rotate slightly around, using another camera.
this is my workaround to avoid over/under-exposing of the projected image to objects in the scene, compared to the background image. (in cinema4d this is automated, there is an option for compositing background). i have used an image posted here.


and the final result ( without adjusting shadows)