Author Environment Maps

Help & Support
1

Hi guys,

What is the easiest way to author environment maps for an environment, i.e I have setup a environment inside Playcanvas and baked the lights using the lightmapper i.e runtime lightmapping, now I would like the props to reflect the light of the environment, how I shall I do this, in the doc I read this:
https://developer.playcanvas.com/en/user-manual/graphics/physical-rendering/image-based-lighting/
" CubeMap is made of 6 faces, each representing square side of a cube, simply put: it can be rendered using square viewport camera, by rotating it in different 90 degrees dirrections with 90 degrees field of view."

and it gave reference to a software called: cmftstudio
but I want to make a environment map for my environment like the given example of the seemore demo environment map (of the chess room), similarly I want to build like this map.

Any help would be appreciated,

Thanks.

2

Hi @Saad_Haider,

Unfortunately it isn’t possible to do that right now in the Playcanvas editor.

You will have to create a custom renderer, that launches your app and for each environment it positions the camera appropriately and renders an image for each face.

That image you will have to download and upload to your project, to be used on a cubemap.

3

Hi Leo,

Any software which can help me with this? or may the best way is to use a external 3D software do the lightning(get lightmaps) there and also generate the cubemap using a plugin like Vray plugin for unity.

so basically I would have to learn the 3D tool or hire somebody for this…

4

Of course you can do, though I was referring to a more straightforward solution art-wise. To use Playcanvas to render the faces of the cubemap.

It can be quite advanced but I think it’s doable. You will have to:

  • position the camera and rotate it to face each direction
  • capture a screenshot for each face
  • download the image and upload it back to your project

https://playcanvas.com/project/438437/overview/capturing-a-screenshot

5

Ah, I got your point,

lets say the environment is a room having pillars, and props, so first of all I would have to clear them up/switch them off, then place the camera somewhere appropriate and run a script on it to give me 6 images? and this will be done for every room…

6

Yes, something like that, though doing it manually I don’t think makes sense unless you are just experimenting.

You will have to code an automation script that does the job for you: position/rotation/rendering and automatically toggling on/off layers/entities that shouldn’t be part of the cubemap.

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7

Ah, gotcha,
Still it wont guarantee good result tho, so maybe I should learn a 3d tool just for setup (lightning etc)…

Thank you for your help.

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8

Yes agreed, for better quality you should be doing that in an offline modelling/rendering app.

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