Custom environment map

Hi there,
I am modelling a spaceship and I want to render it in a space environment.I do astrophotography as a hobby so I have some photographs of nebulas and planets.How do I turn these photos into an envrionment map.I want to do a flyby and turntable of my spaceship to make it look like it is in space. if I cant make an envirnment map could I use my photos as a backrop and then use a studio environment with one light source to mimic a sun. If this is the way I have to do it do I just use the picture function to make a backdrop?

Assuming you have regular shots and not panorama shots then the picture command would indeed be a good pick, since you want your stars to emit light - no shading on the plane containing your image.

You can use a directional light to mimic the sun - it is what is used when you enable the document sun in Rhino anyway.

You can of course also still use a skylight, but I would not necessarily use the studio environment. Maybe even your shots as an environment for the reflections could be an interesting test.

The larger and higher-resolution your photographs are the more room you have to play with them to create the environment you like.

I’m sure @BrianJ can give good tips on how to use photographs for environments.

I would try to create a 360° panorama like this one:


Affinity Photo is a nice image editor which has a great panorama edit mode where I would add the photos of nebulas and other space effects.

For example here the panorama editing by Affinity Photo can be seen:

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Thanks ,
once I have made the 360 degree panorama photo how do I make it an environment map in Rhino?
Carl

check out this topic

and this