Make your own HDRI with a Mirror Ball
pavla writes:
Make your own Blender HDRI – for cheap!
In this Blender video tutorial, we’ll look at an inexpensive way to capture your own environment map.
All you need is a mirror ball (also known as a baoding ball) and a camera. The ball costs around $5 and it’s by far the most affordable (and, of course, the COOLEST) way to create your very own HDRI.
We will then use Blender to integrate CG elements into your photographic background.
The tutorial is now live on CG Cookie.
May I ask why a mirror ball rather than an equirectangular image. I regularly turn out both for other platforms but in blender I do not understand the reason for preference?
Thanks, this tutorial highlights a low budget way of capturing environment maps using a mirror ball (boading ball) that cost ~$10. Within Blender using the ‘mirror ball’ projection in the environment texture allows the artist to use their captured mirror ball directly, without the need to convert from one projection to another.
With a mirror ball you can use a regular camera. For a equirectangular photo you would need one of those crazy spherical cameras you see on top of google street view cars.
No, you can use just a normal camera to create equirectangular panoramas. It is possible even with android phone using for example street view app. (not going to be exr file tho, but equirectangular anyways)
For CG integration, I believe you can use a mirror ball video as hdri for dynamic lighting and reflections. Panoramas are always static.
Nice :)
It’s way easier with a mirror ball as opposed to taking a panorama because with one single picture you can capture pretty much everything, 360×180 degrees. If you want to use HDR for accurate lighting you just need to bracket a couple pics of the ball and you’re done. If resolution is not a priority, this is a pretty awesome way to do it. And you can transform the mirror ball picture into an equirectangular one.