Tim and i experimented with mounting a chrome / mirror ball to a video camera.
We were thinking about if it would be possible to use the image as some sort of reflection to map to a car’s reflection in 2D.
Anyway, its all low res, but pretty interesting to look at.
The element shot:
Then after a polar to rectangular conversion:
Yeah I’ve seen that technique heaps in the mags and Nimmo is always talkin’ about it. Would like to see how you would use it on a car or something else just as reflective like you said.
Good Day, I came across this post while searching for on the internet. Keep up the good information. I will check back next Tuesday. Have a great day!
Hey im using this technique to create some dynamics reflections for my VFX uni project and been researching for some time now, i just cant find the software to unwrap the mirror ball in a batch process, how did u unwrap yours or what software did u use?
Hi Bhavik
This was a little while ago but i imagine we either:
1. Used shake – to stablise the footage, crop it,
Then unwrap it with whatever the default plugin that shake had.
2. Used shake – to stablise the footage, crop it, then export it as an image sequence.
Then run the image sequence through photoshop to unwrap it (Polar Coordinates filter?) and then scale it 200% on the x axis.
These days it can be easily accomplished in Nuke – with a SphericalTransform (LatLong map?)?
Hope that sort of helps you!
Thanks for the quick response Adam.
Yes!! Why did i not think of that iv been taught Nuke in my second year, Shake is pretty much obsolete from what the big vfx houses tell me.
I will give that a try thanks make.
hey have you tried using the lat long in maya and done a test projection on a model or something?