Spherical backgrounds and NPR composites

[CWR63]

I finally tired of using free HDRi backgrounds and figured out how to make my own, these are only 360 degree spherical maps, not true HDRi, but I only wanted them for background images - not lighting; there’s nothing stopping anybody from making them HDRi in post, though. I ended up doing this because the universal camera in ZB goes all autocrop if you try to get any extreme wide angles with a big mesh (like, say, an environment) and attempts to use the 2D backdrop function just crashes ZB (support replicated it, so it’s got a fix ticket in) but 360 backgrounds are fine up to 8K, mebbe higher.
So if you render a 2:1 4K (4096x2048 minimum for clarity, but since we’re doing this for NPR renders, photorealism is not the goal) in DAZ studio using an IRAY camera set to spherical, it might take between 1 & 2 hours per render. I would suggest putting the lens settings in the name of each spherical render to help setting the camera in ZB, which I failed to do here, leading to a slight but noticeable scale mismatch. You could say I’ve been using DAZ Studio since it was called Poser 2, so I have a decent catalog of environments to use for this (although lighting the older ones using IRAY is it’s own special problem) but it imports a lot of formats - this one was .dae - so it’s great if you are, like me, a fan of Stonemason.
Just be warned that camera placement really matters when rendering the spherical background, if the camera’s near the ground, pointed upward - that’s pretty much what you’re stuck with, despite having 360 degrees to play around in. If you are having trouble with the background not being visible except when you render, switch from ‘preview’ to ‘best’ under render, wait until it finishes scanning out the screen in ‘best’, then switch back to ‘preview’ - it should now be always visible in real time.
Here’s a small sampling of 360 backgrounds I rendered using this method, the tiny jpegs are there as the tiffs won’t show preview thumbnails:
CWR63’s 360 background renders
The background is a DAZ Studio IRAY spherical render of Stonemason’s Sci-Fi Corridor 2013.
This is a composite of Daniel_Bel_Comix, Chromatic_Aberration, and a Pencil_Sketch_Color NPRs:

This is all of the renders these were composited from (the first six composites in this thread are the 5a shots):

The remainder of these are limited to two NPR elements only - any more than 2 - 3 images in a composite is something that I, at least, can’t keep from turning muddled and dull.

[CWR63]

This is Line Art 02 and Watery Ink NPRs. I modified the LinaArt02 filter with a scaled up Zhelong Ink filter masked for the background only:

[CWR63]

The site keeps rejecting images as being larger than 4096 Kbytes when my PC is telling me they are smaller - turns out files larger than 3072 Kb won’t be accepted (from me at least, still a new user). Well these are 150% larger than a 4K screen, so they are rather severely optimized.
Purple Rain and Comics Daboix NPRs:

Zhelong Ink and WaterColor Sketch NPRs:

Jewel V1 and Oil Paint Sharp NPRs:

Messy Watercolor and Black and White with Markers NPRs:

I will be very surprised if anyone finds this of use, but I’m happy to give back whatever I can to this great user community.

[CWR63]

The same models with Stonemason’s Urban Future 5 spherical render background (render 07a):
Zhelong Ink & Dot Render Toon NPRs:

Purple Rain & Watery Ink NPRs:

Line Render Diagonal & Watercolor Sketch NPRs:

[CWR63]

Watercolor Sketch and Line render Diagonal NPRs composite over 2 Sketchfab spaceships on Planet X-2 environment from DAZ:

[CWR63]

Stonemason’s Urban Future 2 is the spherical background render here.
Black & White with markers and Watercolor Sketch NPR composite:

Daboix & Oil Paint Sharp & Jewelry V1 NPR composite:

Zhelong Ink & Watery Ink NPR composite:

[CWR63]

Stonemason’s Sci Fi Corridor 2013 with alternate camera and lightning.
Purple Rain and Jewelry V1 NPR composite:

Line art 02 and Messy Watercolors NPR composite:

Watercolor Sketch001 and Pastels NPR composite:

Zhelong Ink and Watery Ink NPR composite:

That’s the lot.