Pano Painter, an Interesting program.

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eric1223
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Pano Painter, an Interesting program.

Post by eric1223 »

I had this for a while, but just remembered to talk about this. With this program, u can paint in 3D, and it will export the image in 3D as an equirectangular map. So it works with the spherical panorama script. But you may need to scale the 3d object after you use it though; depends how u export and draw I guess. You can animate with it too, but I haven't got into it that much.
Anyway, here is the link.
https://panopainter.com/

Also this if your even more interested....

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Greenlaw
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Re: Pano Painter, an Interesting program.

Post by Greenlaw »

That's sooo cool! I think I can use that program.

Thanks for sharing the link!
eric1223
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Re: Pano Painter, an Interesting program.

Post by eric1223 »

You're welcome!
ruscular3d
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Re: Pano Painter, an Interesting program.

Post by ruscular3d »

Its on sale now on Steam for $2
90% off sale!
till April 13th 2020
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Greenlaw
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Re: Pano Painter, an Interesting program.

Post by Greenlaw »

Woah! That deal is too good to pass up.
ruscular3d
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Re: Pano Painter, an Interesting program.

Post by ruscular3d »

How are you able to use it with Moho13? How do you export it into Moho?
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Greenlaw
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Re: Pano Painter, an Interesting program.

Post by Greenlaw »

Mapping a 360-degree painting, rendering, or photograph inside a sphere with flipped polygons is a commonly used 'cheat' for 3D animation and compositing programs to create backgrounds, reflections, and scene lighting. Done right, using a spherical map can be significantly faster than rendering a lot of actual geometry in a scene, and it can look every bit as convincing. Many video games use this cheat too.

Since I like to output my Moho animations for compositing in programs like After Effects or Fusion, I would project the 360 image inside a sphere in either of these programs, or in a 3D program like LightWave. A lot of environments seen on any of my demo reels were created this way. For some of the scenes in Scareplane, (my very first Moho short,) I think I may have combined Moho character renders with LightWave for this effect. (Sorry, that was years ago and I would have go back and check what I did there to be sure.)

I never tried to create this effect directly inside Moho but, in theory anyway, it should be possible. For object formats, I know Moho 13 is supposed to accept OBJ with a UV map--you can create a sphere with the map easily in almost any 3D program. In earlier versions of Moho, I think you would use spherical mapping? For now, I'm totally just guessing about this. I don't typically do 3D inside Moho but if I have time this evening, I'll check if Moho is able to accept a spherical map and let you know how that goes.
Last edited by Greenlaw on Fri Apr 10, 2020 6:18 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Greenlaw
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Re: Pano Painter, an Interesting program.

Post by Greenlaw »

I played around with Pano Painter last night. The UI is a bit clunky but I have to confess it's fun to play with. And, hey, it was only 2 bucks!

I don't have anything worth showing yet (except a really crappy landscape painting that I'll be deleting,) but next I'll attempt something I won't be embarrassed to show. :)

I'll also look into how to get this into Moho, if that's possible, today.
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Greenlaw
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Re: Pano Painter, an Interesting program.

Post by Greenlaw »

Oh, cool! I got it working in Moho 12. This is a stock 360 image I found online mapped to the inside of a sphere...and it works!

Image

It also works well with the 'crappy landscape' painting I created with Pano Painter but I won't be showing that. Will show a test with a better effort later today. :)

Trying the above test in Moho 13 now.

Update: Confirmed. This test works perfectly fine in Moho 13 too.
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uncle808us
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Re: Pano Painter, an Interesting program.

Post by uncle808us »

Hi Greenlaw,
How are you doing this is it just an Image layer, or an 3d object, I want to try doing this in Anime Studio Pro 11.
If you can give me a starting place.
I also got Pano Paint haven't got into it very deeply yet.
Thanks.
I use a MacBook Pro, and Anime Studio Pro 11.2
http://uncle808s.blogspot.com
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Greenlaw
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Re: Pano Painter, an Interesting program.

Post by Greenlaw »

It's essentially the setup described earlier: I imported a sphere with flipped polygon surfaces (facing inward.) The sphere has a spherical UV map that wraps the applied texture inside.

I'll make a proper tutorial later but here's a quick list of steps:

1. In a 3D program, create a sphere with a spherical UV map. Flip the polygons and then triple them. I used LightWave to do this but there's nothing special about this technique; any 3D program should be able to create a sphere like this with couple of mouse clicks.

2. Apply the spherical image texture (an exported Pano Paint image, for example) to the sphere. Set the luminance shading to 100% and diffuse shading to 0%. In LightWave, I have to apply the texture to be able to export the .obj with the UV map; this is probably true for other 3D programs.

3. Export the sphere as an .obj file.

4. In Moho, import the .obj.

5. For some reason, the texture wasn't immediately visible after I imported it. I had to save and close the file and then re-open it for the texture to become visible.

6. In the Layer window's 3D options, disable Silhouette and set the Shading to None. (You don't want any of the toon shading effects for this.)

7. Set the position for your camera to 0,0,0, and set the lens to 70mm or whatever looks good to you.

8. If necessary, scale the sphere up to enclose the entire scene.

I think that's it. I wrote this from memory so I'll document the steps properly the next time I do this, just in case I missed a step.

I haven't taken this any farther in Moho yet but here are some tips based on my experience with other animation programs:

To complete the scene, place your Moho layers (i.e., animated characters or props) around the inside of the sphere and orientate them to face the camera.

In general, you'll want to keep the camera in place and animate the rotation. It's fine to translate the camera but be aware that the illusion will probably break if the camera moves too far from the center region. Make sure the sphere is scaled up big enough so you can move around in it.

This effect is resolution dependent, so if the image resolution isn't high enough, it will pixelate as the camera nears the surface of the sphere.

Hope this gets you started. If you don't have a 3D program, don't worry, I'll upload the sphere I made. All you'll need to do is swap out the image file.
Last edited by Greenlaw on Sat Apr 11, 2020 7:52 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Greenlaw
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Re: Pano Painter, an Interesting program.

Post by Greenlaw »

One more note: I did the above test in Moho 12, not ASP 11, so I'm not sure it will work there.

For Moho 13, I just opened the Moho 12 file and re-saved it as a Moho 13 file. Since Moho 13 has a different 3D engine, I'll have to check later if this effect can be created directly inside Moho 13 without going through Moho 12 first.

Will post more info and sample files when I have more time to play.
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Greenlaw
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Re: Pano Painter, an Interesting program.

Post by Greenlaw »

Ok, one more note: When I did the original test shown above, the camera was at Moho's default Z position. I think this causes the edges to warp like a fish eye lens. The steps for centering the camera and adjusting the lens should eliminate the warping effect.
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uncle808us
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Re: Pano Painter, an Interesting program.

Post by uncle808us »

It works fine in Anime Studio Pro Ver.11.2.1.
I use Cheetah 3D for my modeling. ( the Character in this vid was made in Cheetah 3d and also the sphere obj texture from Panp painter cloud.) Eye Set and mouth set made in Affinity Photo.

This all worked well up to the point of now Pano painter crashes immediately on open... was working now it won't bought it from the Apple store. Sent crash report to info@panopaint hope they can help.

Image
I use a MacBook Pro, and Anime Studio Pro 11.2
http://uncle808s.blogspot.com
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Greenlaw
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Re: Pano Painter, an Interesting program.

Post by Greenlaw »

That's awesome! And glad to hear the 'spherical environment' trick works in ASP 11. Thanks for sharing.

Sorry to hear Pano Painter is crashing for you. It doesn't crash on my laptop but the OS is Win 10 and I purchased from Steam. I have seen a few refresh glitches though.

I'm going to try working in Pano Painter again later today. I still think the UI is clunky and not especially intuitive but I'm finding some interesting and useful feature I had not expect to find in this program. Unless I'm missing something, it seems to only export JPEG, which isn't great. But for $2, I really shouldn't complain...plus it is fun to play around in.
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