[Nova66]

I'm coming from a MicroStation background and even though I've been using Maxwell for a little while now, I still feel like a bit of a noob some time. Anyway, MicroStation has a QuickTime cubic panorama render mode but since Maxwell doesn't seem to have anything that's equivalent I thought I'd create the six camera views in MicroStation and render them out with Maxwell.

I used a program called Pano2VR to create a QuickTime panorama from the six cubic images and the whole process went quite well. The problem I'm having is that the Maxwell renderings have a bit of Vignetting in them which adds a visible darkening to the corners of each cubic face of the panorama. I've attached a zip file to this post that contains a sample QuickTime panorama, the darkening is particularly visible on the back wall opposite the large window.

I'm wondering if there are any settings in Maxwell that will eliminate the Vignetting or is Photoshop going to be my only option.

Thanks,
Andrew Novinc.

[numerobis]

yes, you can set devignetting in simulens parameters




btw... there is a manual included in the installation

[Nova66]

yes, you can set devignetting in simulens parameters

Thanks for that, it's so obvious when you know where to look.

Believe it or not, I spent quite a bit of time looking on the net and I even have a hard copy of the PDF manual which I flicked through but since I wasn't explicitly using the Simulens feature my eyes just kept skipping over that section.

I'm re-rendering the panorama now and I can see already that it's made all the difference

Cheers,
Andrew Novinc.

[numerobis]

when you have the mxi stored then you don't have to rerender, you can load the mxi and adjust this in post

[Nova66]

This is a follow up on the workflow described earlier. I've attached a zip file containing a higher res test panorama which turned out just great!

The Devignetting setting was exactly what I needed and the Pano2VR stitching software made the final stage of combining the images a breeze


Cheers,
Andrew Novinc.

[soarchitect]

very cool image!

Can you clarify your process? How did you set up your cameras in Microstation? did you still use the cubic panoramic tool,
or did you set up your six views independent of this tool?

[Nova66]

How did you set up your cameras in MicroStation? did you still use the cubic panoramic tool, or did you set up your six views independent of this tool?

I set up the camera views manually and independently from the delivered panorama tool. I saved each view so that when I did the Maxwell export, the MXS file would automatically contain the six camera setups. From there I manually rendered each view in Maxwell Render and stitched them up using Pano2VR.

Check out the the attached screen capture for a clearer explanation.




HTH,
Andrew Novinc.

[soarchitect]

excellent instructions! I am going to give this a try later this evening. I assume
the camera/eye position never changes, only rotating 90 degrees for each view.

what about the floor/ceiling? does the camera position have to change for these
views?

It is unfortunate that bentley never finished the maxwell plugin....

thanks for the info

[Nova66]

what about the floor/ceiling? does the camera position have to change for these views?

Nope, the camera position stays in exactly the same spot. I changed the "Elevate" angle to 90º & -90º for the top and bottom views.

The only issue you will have is that the completed top and bottom renderings might need to be rotated some multiple of 90º for the Pano2VR software to be able to stitch the cube up correctly. But that's a minor inconvenience.

I'd like to see your results.
Andrew Novinc.

[roch_fr]

hello,
on my side I use a free tool for assembling images : gocubic (windows). On OS X you have makecubic.

For french readers here is a tutorial to create QTVR : http://www.maxwellrender.fr/PDF_maxwell ... render.pdf

Roch