Illustrating in 360°
When I decided that a 360° illustration was going to be my first project of 2019, I never would have guessed, how much knowledge I would gain and how much enthusiasm I would develop for this topic. In the course of just a few tutorials I was able to learn everything to make it work properly. Therefore I decided to share those tutorials and links with you.
3D illustration is generally a topic that evolves these days, with VR technologies becoming more and more common. Especially if you have a look at Artstation or the portfolios of concept artists, you find a lot of really cool worlds that you can experience by moving around inside of them. We are used to see 360° photos but it’s breathtaking to see fantastic worlds and imagined stories coming to life when you explore a spherical illustration little by little.
Terminology
Before starting, I want to make sure we’re all talking about the same subject. It’s not about flat images with a perspective grid (1/2/3-point-perspective), nor about an image with a parallax effect. We mean a drawing on the inside of a sphere, where you have a fixed standpoint but can change your view by turning and also looking up and down.
Software & setup
I started by buying and testing the app Panopainter on the iPad, ending up firstly fascinated and soon frustrated because of bugs and constraints that made it hard to establish a constant workflow. For example, I searched forever for a way to deselect a selection, turned around and found half of a picture deleted that I didn’t even work on at that part of the process or I did not manage to import a png without a transparent background.
So I watched this wonderful tutorial and decided to use the good old photoshop: Pano painting tutorial by Jama Jurabaev In it, he explains the basic setup for using a spherical map in photoshop and he created a 3dimensional grid for downloading that helps so much to navigate.
Summarized, the workflow goes like this:
create a big canvas with an aspect ratio of 2:1 (e.g. 6000x3000 px)
load a grid (like the one in the tutorial) or another picture that works like a 360 photo and make sure this layer is selected
(in the current Adobe CC:) click on „3D“ – „spherical panorama“ – „new panorama layer from selected layer“
you now only see a part of the picture and can move around already and draw directly on the sphere
you can also double-click on the spherical map that works like a smart object, and work directly on the map
Workflow
For the drawing process, this tutorial was very helpful: Edit spherical panoramas by Photoshop Training Channel Although it shows and explains everything based on a photo, it contains the best tips about a non-destructive way of working.
The problem is this: when you sketch something on a new layer in the normal mode and move around, the new layer moves with you. If you want to fixate the drawing to the spherical map, the steps are:
open the spherical map and create a new (empty) layer, make sure the layer is selected
save and close the spherical map
in the normal view, draw on a layer directly above the spherical one
when ready, right-click on the drawing layer and choose „merge down“ (if you are not sure you’re ready, keep a copy of the layer)
the drawing is now part of your spherical map, but it is on the layer you created before
Preliminary 3D model
For my personal workflow in the future, the next tutorial on how to build and export a scene as a 360° panorama in Cinema 4D might come in handy as well: Panorama Rendering by Konstantin Magnus I’ve successfully tested it already. The scene that is described is random but the export of it is quite tricky. The program doesn’t offer a direct way yet so there’s a little workaround:
in render settings, choose the format „Quicktime VR panorama“
the default resolution and the output size should be the same (aspect ratio 2:1)
unclick „save“ in the render settings
render and then save the image as a picture manually. Tadaa!
I hope these tips help you getting started. Are you as excited as I am?
