Am I exspecting too much? HDRI Probes

[Nutsy]

I’ve just got my gazing ball witch i intend to use for HDRI probes, But the quality is allot less than I expected.

Have I got a POS ball or am I just expecting too much?

I paid 20 quid [Pounds for non brits] for a 20CM ball and the chrome surface is rippling and had imperfections all over it. Smears and very light dents.

So is this the quality I should expect?

http://www.scifi-meshes.com/nutsy/st...e/IMG_4265.jpg
http://www.scifi-meshes.com/nutsy/st...e/IMG_4263.jpg

Note the window frames and how fragmented they are.

Have I been ripped off? Or is that right?

Also anyone know where i can get better quality?

Nutsy

[Westonian]

amazing clarity in that photo, but I love "exspected"

[Nutsy]

*sighs* Dyslexic

[spudmonkey]

You would probably be better off using stitching software to create your HDRI maps as that way you don't have to edit yourself (or the camera and its stand) out of every image. However, if you are simply planning on using the images as reflection maps in renders then the blur would be fine and possibly even beneficial to the feel of the render

I would however check to see if you had ordered a smooth/mirrored gazing ball or a kaleidoscopic one as it sounds like you have the latter when you wanted the former

[Nutsy]

It wasnt very clear on the site. But I did call them up and asked them if the surface was a perfect mirrored finish... They said it was. :/

Any idea where i can get a properly smooth one?

[D.M.J.]

This thread reminded me of something I read which might help, so a few minutes of following up my suspicions brought me to...

Where can one buy mirrored spheres?

Dube juggling equipment offers hollow mirrored spheres in several sizes between 2 and 3 inches in diameter. They're light and shinier, but sometimes not perfectly spherical.

Some of our research has made use of ball bearings from:

King Bearing, Inc., a subsidiary of Applied Industrial Technologies
Has many locations nationally, check Yellow Pages : Superpages Yellow Pages, Maps, Driving Directions, Weather... for one near you.

You may also find ball bearings in the McMaster-Carr catalog.

The shiniest seem to be the 2-inch chrome balls, which are less than $20 each. This is the type used for Fiat Lux and for most of the Image-Based Lighting paper. For Rendering with Natural Light and the Grace Cathedral Light Probes, we used a 3-inch ball.

Large Gazing Balls, made of glass and plated on the inside with a mirror-like material, can be ordered from Baker's Lawn Ornaments. They are available in 6, 10, and 12-inch diameters. They are not optically perfect, as their surfaces are somewhat rippled and the front surface of the glass will produce a faint secondary reflection.

(From HDR Shop FAQ)

Sounds like what you have discovered. So perhaps a 2-3" ball bearing is the way to go?

[Mach Crit]

I have just seen a tutorial on using a lightprobe image in blender (for backgrounds) and I was looking around on how to generate them (the light probe image). It seems that the further away from the ball the camera is (within reason obviously) the more 360-like the image becomes and the cameraman is much less visible. (like a zoom on the ball from 3 feet away). This would also have the affect of reducing the ripples and other imperfections.

Also, the images I have seen (and maybe it is due to the height of objects in the "background", shows more of a wrap around separating the "ground" from the "sky" at the equator of the sphere.

[Nutsy]

Sorry if you missunderstood the photos ive showen arnt the HDRIs there just photos showing the imperfections on the ball.