Skydome

When it comes to creating a background for my animations in 3D Studio Max, I usually take the easy option and simply apply a background image to a plane and stick it far enough away to give it some distance. This is usually good enough and does the job. Even more so when the camera remains still for most of the animation (Like how I originally planned mine to be). However, with the camera angles constantly changing it becomes increasingly obvious that the background is more or less a giant poster and ruins the illusion. This is where skydomes, or sky boxes, come in.

I have never used a skydome before, but I am well aware of how effective they can be. Essentially, a sky done is just a sphere with a background image attached to the inside. The sphere is then placed around the scene, creating a more believable environment. This way the camera can freely move around without effecting the angle of the background.

While it is certainly more usful from an animation point of view, I have to say that I still prefer just using a plane. Probably because it is so much simpler. Here is a comparison between my old plane background and the new skydome background:




In my opinion, the plane background looks so much better because the image has not been stretched. While it is possible to reduce the amount of stretch on an image in a skydome, I just found it very difficult to get it to look as perfect as it did beforehand. It also didnt help that I had to find a panorama image for the skydome(an image that can be perfectly placed back to back with no obvious seams), which was quite difficult to do.

Here is the tutorial that I used:



Its still quite early into the semester. Im sure that I will have time to fix the stretching, or even find a better image. Still, I am happy enough with the way it has turned out. It, along with the new camera angles, definately improves the atmosphere in my animation.