and this is the pack file.

regards,
george

three simple bits of geometry photo matched in su with a pic of the web, one spot light within su
and 5 minutes time spent, you can even move the light around the theater real time in ir useing the bottom arrows,
this will save me soo much time in drawing the geometry of theaters, and the whole pack file is tiny
this is sooo cool and will speed up visulisations of sets so much easier

I can imagine this is going to be a great asset for the work you do and a time saver, better still when Thea4SU comes out as you can do it all "in house"
I must hit the tuts on photo matching I'm hopeless at it

Well, I'm confused again. I have used photo match in SU quite a bit, but I still can't figure out what you did.

You started with a plain flat photograph (not spherical hdr or anything) of the theater. You used that photo in a photo match in SU. Once you calibrated your axes, you drew in the primitives and added a spot light.

But then what? Did you project the photo onto any of your primitives from within SU? I sort of don't think so.

If you simply exported the scene to Thea, I guess the part I'm missing is where nigec would have put an hdr in the IBL background, hidden the primitives, rendered the hdr, saved the image, and projected that image onto the primitives using front projection. Did you simply create a big plane in Thea and assign your original flat photo as the diffuse texture to the plane and all of the primitives using front projection? I guess that would work if you only want to work with one camera - the camera that you essentially back calculated via SU photo match. However, when I try that, I seem to have scaling issues with the textures on the primitives (the photo is projected onto the primitive, but the scale of the image is too big. I would have thought since the photo, camera, and texture were OK in SU. It is actually better when actually rendering, but in the interactive renderer, it is quite far off.

Anyway, if you are not too tired of this thread, any clarifications greatly appreciated!

I'll try to attach the .skp file and as far as I got with a .pack file.

hi no not tired of the thread as i am still trying to figure it all out myself, now i am confudsed with the camera mapping
as for using the photo match in su all i exported was the simple geometry and the spot,
then i selected all in thea, and then front mapped the same image of the theater onto all the geometry, just so i had some sort of reality for the light to hit
like the left wall, the procenium arch, and the stage itself, it was a very rough and ready try
to see how easy it would be to cut down on drawing geometry for simple visulisations of theaters, no spherical ibl, no sky , just a bit of sun set really dim,
of course i will still have to model theaters and other venues to scale for purchasing rigging and designing the sets ,
but for kwik lighting of the stage with real picture of it works well and kwik

hi dave,
what you should do (since you have positioned the "shooting" camera) is to set the materials global texture texture co-ords to "Camera Map" and assign the proper camera.
i think this is the look you wanted to get


the big advantage of camera mapping is that you can move/rotate around with another camera,
since the projection of the mapping image is "fixed" to the projection of the mapping camera.
the philisophy of camera mapping is similar of how slide projectors work.


regards,
george

hi,
if you use the reference photo with Frontal projection,
(that is set the material's global texture co-ords to Frontal projection),
you should set the camera (& render) resolution to match the proportions of the photo.
i.e if the photo you are using has a 4:3 ratio, then you should render the scene using that proportion.
(i think your camera settings didn't have that ratio.)
regards,
george

Hoorah!!!. Thanks guys. I kept trying to get Camera Mapping to work, but always ended up with a dull single color texture. Now I realize I wasn't selecting a camera after selecting camera mapping!! Its always the simple things.

Now its starting to come together. And with that last explanation on just what camera mapping is good for, I can't wait to try some other tests.

Thanks again!

yes thanks as well, its starting to become clearer as to what does what,
thru trial and error, and you guys explaining the nitty gritty bits, i would have
thought of even looking at camera co-ordinates and stuff like that

Your r2 nigec is visiting a lot of places since a few days. I made him travel a lot ... and he likes that
I applied your tutorial.
Rendering TR1, 10 min.
The seam between HDRI and the floor is always visible although I tweaked HDRI brightness and tone mapped the front texture. With a little more work on the seam, I think I could delete it.