360 fisheye effect in photoshop...

[Mrvile]

I'm trying to create some high resolution environment maps for Rhino using panoramas and I came across this site... http://www.sparse.org/3d.html

If you look at the first two images, they are just two 180° fisheye shots, back to back. Then, the next row of images he combined the two for what is essentially 360° view of each, spherized. He explains the effect pretty well, but doesn't say anything about how to do it. I feel like it's pretty straightforward and I've seen other images like that before, but I wasn't really able to find anything. Help?

Thanks!

 

[rivan]

A 360 degree image may be obtained by taking a picture of mirrored sphere from a great distance. Alternately I synthesized such an image from two fisheye images taken with my digital camera and a 180 degree fisheye lens. Two such images are shown below. The second image is taken "backwards" from the first.

That said, he has errors in his texture, which he calls a slight discontinuity at about 70%. I'd call it repeating a significant part of the texture and it would bother me, even if 99% of people looking at the final map never noticed - you can clearly see the repeated building in the "Single Donut" rendering.

So, as for your dilemma in your OP, he took the image with a 180 fisheye, like this (not recommending that lens, it's just the first one I found while searching BH/fisheye):
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/produc..._8G_ED_DX.html

Outside a fisheye lens you can possibly stitch one together from a set of panorama images using something like Microsoft's free ICE or one of many other panorama packages out there:
http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/redmond/groups/ivm/ice/