How to create spherical panoramas in 360 degrees.

Spherical panoramas can be very helpful in staging interiors, as they allow the viewer to explore the space by himself. You don`t have to worry about selecting limited camera angles for rendering (important task in creating a 3D configurator). Instead, you can use your spherical 360° shot to cover any view you might want to render separately.

But rendering a 360° view is not the most difficult part. You also habe to make it easy for everyone to explore it. In this tutorial, you`ll learn not only how to set up V-Ray for rendering such shots, but also how to edit the image metadata and integrate it with some impressive free VR viewers. Let`s get started.

Camera settings in V-Ray.

• Insert a V-Ray camera and place it exactly in the middle.
• Make sure that the camera target and the camera are at the same height and the view is directed to the ground.
• Open the Render Setup dialog and set the image dimensions to 6000×3000. The width to height ratio should always be 2:1 and at least 6000 pixels wide for best results.
• In the V-Ray Render Setup tab, set the camera rollout type to Spherical with an Override FOV of 360.
• Then set any render elements for post-processing and press the render button.
• Due to the massive rendering dimensions, you should not take the details in the scene and the rendering samples too much to heart.

Edit Metadata.

To publish this spherical 360° rendering on Facebook, you need to change the metadata embedded in the image, because Facebook uses the metadata of an image to identify spherical panoramas captured ny 360° cameras.

1. Once you`ve saved your rendering to your hard drive, right-click the file and open its properties.
2. Go to the Details pane, scroll down and enter the camera brand as RICOH and the model as RICOH THETA S. This is a true panoramic camera from RICOH.
3. You can also use an online tool like Exifer to edit these details.
4. Now load and post this spherical shot on Facebook and it should load it with its own panorama viewer.

Free VR Viewer Tools.

If you want to publish this spherical rendering on your website or send it to the client for viewing in a browser, you can use the free Marzi PANO Web tool. Simply upload your rendering and a downloadable  HTML package will be created containing all files for online and offline viewing in one browser. You can also use the incredibly simple GoPRO VR Player for instant viewing on your PC.

• MarziPANO: http://www.marzipano.net
• GoPRO VR Player: http://www.kolor.com/gopro-vr-player/download

Many thanks for reading and have fun trying it out.