3ds Max 2018 - MAXtoA Plugin - Part 4 - VR Camera
Learn how to use MaxtoA (Arnold renderer) VR camera to render a scene in stereoscopic 360-degree left eye/right eye output. This can be very useful for immersive experiences, where a customer can take your design and explore it with a VR headset.
Notes
- Recorded in: 3ds Max 2018
- This tutorial is intended for use with 3ds Max version 2018 or higher.
Learning resources
Transcript
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In addition to its hefty arsenal, Arnold provides one more perk, a special camera for VR renderings.
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These can be useful to view on VR headsets, even the low-end solutions such as the Google Cardboard.
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The Arnold VR Camera makes it very easy to create stereoscopic 360-degree renders of your scenes without relying on special plugins or long procedures.
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Let's have a look. Open the scene named Room_VR.max. It's the same room you worked on in the last movie.
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The Arnold render settings are at their low defaults for now. We'll revisit those in a moment.
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At this point, there are a couple of Physical Cameras in the scene. You don't see them because their layer is set to Hidden.
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Make the layer visible and in fact, make it current so that the VR Camera you are about to create is also part of that layer.
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From the Create > Cameras panel, switch to the Arnold sub-category. You will find a sole button labeled VR Camera.
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It's a free camera type (non-targeted) that you place in a side view so that it's oriented horizontally.
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After that, you can use the Move tool to relocate it where you need it to be, usually in the center of the space.
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In the Modify panel, you can see the camera parameters, we'll come back to these in a moment.
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If you display the camera in a viewport, the effect is quite distorted.
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Don't let that bother you, the resulting render is quite different.
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The one thing you should look out for however is that the VR Camera does not have EV parameters like the Physical Camera does.
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If you're not careful, this can play some bad tricks on you.
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Chances are any test renders you have made prior to placing the VR camera involved a Physical Camera with specific EV values.
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In this case, the Physical Cameras in the scene are using EV values of 12.5
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However, press 8 to go to the Environment dialog.
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It states that if Physical Cameras are used in the scene, their EV values are used for rendering purposes.
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If not, other cameras would be using the EV value listed in this dialog, currently set to 6.
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A render of the VR Camera at this point would be very bright, so overexposed in fact that you can hardly see anything.
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So you want to make sure the global EV value in the environment dialog is equal or very close to the one you used on Physical Camera experiments.
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By setting the Global Exposure value to 12.5, the render now should look quite a bit more reasonable.
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We'll address rendering quality in a second.
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The VR camera renders a combination of left eye/right eye in a single image, set in a top/bottom configuration.
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This is the default configuration known as Over/Under.
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You can choose from different configuration such as side by side, or even render the left and right eye images as separate files.
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Your choice will depend on the application you are using to view the scene on your VR headset
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Personally, I use a simple Google Cardboard and an android smart phone.
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I use an application called VU Gallery (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.vustudio.vr.vugallery&hl=en) by a company named VU Studi
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This particular app can handle both Over/Under and Side by Side formats. I usually render side by side.
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The Eye Separation value controls the 3D effect. Too high a value can in fact work against you and make for a dizzy experience.
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Typically, it should be about 1/30th the distance to the focal plane but I have found that the default value of 2.559 works best in most circumstances.
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2.559 represents the accepted distance between the left and right human eyes, measured in inches.
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Before you crank up the render quality, consider also the image output format.
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Right now, the render is set to a 16:9 HD aspect ratio. For 360-degree renderings, you should use a 2:1 aspect ratio.
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In the Render Settings > Common tab, set the Output Size to Custom and the width to be twice as big as the height, such as 1024x512.
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The Image Aspect value should read 2 and the render is now "VR-ready".
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Keep in mind that for VR renderings, you will get much better results with high-resolution outputs.
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You'll need at least a 3k (3000x1500) pixel image to experience decent results. The higher the resolution, the better the experience.
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You obviously also need to increase the render quality, which in turn will increase render time.
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Be ready to render VR images overnight as they will take many hours to process.
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The image seen here and that has been made available to you is 4k (4096x2048) resolution,
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and the Render Settings were increased to use high Diffuse samples (10) and high Camera AA (8) with low to medium Specular and Transmission samples (3)
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It still took a little over 12 hours to render on a relatively fast machine, so keep that in mind before you hit that render button.
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Still, what you need to take from all this is the ease of use that lets you create such stereoscopic 360-degree renders.
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This can be a very powerful way to convey designs and ideas to colleagues and clients.
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This is especially true considering that the viewer doesn't need special or high-end equipment to get an immersive experience.
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They already have a smart phone… all they need is a google cardboard that they can pick up for a dollar or two off the internet.?