Hey everyone! Facebook, YouTube and other platforms support
360 degree panoramic images which can be created in 3D software including Blender. Since we are already working in 3D space,
instead of making a simple 2D video or image, why not make one of these. They can be used with virtual reality headsets
or we can use this technique to create our own HDRI backgrounds. I’m going to show you everything I know
about how to create, export and upload 360 degree panoramic images and videos using Blender. Let’s jump into Blender. This is a scene I made as part of a recent
art challenge from Kitbash3D. Something we need to be aware of when creating
a scene for a 360 panorama is that everything will be visible in all directions from the
camera. So if we’re used to hiding light sources
or other things off screen, we may need to get creative with how we do that. We need to make sure the scene is good to
go and well-lit in every direction. Also important: we want the camera to be flat. It shouldn’t be tilted on either the X or
Y axis. And wherever we want the default view of the
360 panorama to be is where we should point the camera. Where I have this camera pointed right now
will ultimately be looking forward in the image or video by default. So with a camera placed in the scene, we can
set up our render. Unfortunately as of now, we can only make
these panoramas using Cycles. They’re not going to work in Eevee because
the cameras don’t have the proper options. So we are in Cycles and there are really only
two things we need to set up. The first is our resolution found in the output
properties panel. These 360 panoramas are mapped to wrap around
the viewer in a very specific way. And they need to have a 2 to 1 aspect ratio. That means they need to be exactly twice as
wide as they are tall. So if we want to make our X resolution 4000,
our Y resolution needs to be 2000. If X was 2000, Y would need to be 1000, etc. But as a side note, this image is going to
be wrapped around a lot more real estate for a viewer, so they really should be pretty
high resolution. The one I showed you before was 8000 by 4000
resolution and it probably should have been a little bit bigger. But the point is this number needs to be double
whatever this number is or it won’t work correctly. The second setting we have to adjust is the
camera type. With the camera selected, we go to our camera
properties settings. And the very top setting is this camera type
- which defaults to the perspective camera we are all probably used to. Well, we need to change this from perspective,
to - you guessed it - panoramic. And under Panoramic Type, there are several
options but we need to make sure we are on “Equirectangular.” And the reason this won’t work in Eevee
is that this equirectangular option isn’t available for cameras in Eevee. Yes, for animators this is very sad. That’s it for the settings. Let’s render a still image and see what
it looks like. I’ll come back to rendering a video in just
a bit. As you can see, we get a very distorted image
of our scene. But that’s ok, that’s exactly what we
want. If you’ve ever gotten an HDRI from a site
like Poly Haven, you’ve seen this look before. This is just how the image is mapped in order
to wrap around the camera in 360 degrees. It’s kind of like how a map is wrapped around
a globe. Now this seems like we are done and you’d
think we could just upload this to Facebook or wherever and it’d be all good. But it won’t. If I post this to Facebook right now, it will
post just as we see it right here. There’s an invisible setting we weren’t
able to give this image in Blender. You see, every image file can contain EXIF
metadata about a whole bunch of things like which camera took the photo, where it was
taken, etc. Well, metadata is also what tells a program
- like Facebook for example - that this is supposed to be a 360 image. As far as I know - and I’ve checked pretty
thoroughly - there’s no way to add this information in Blender - despite us being
able to add other metadata to a render. But, there are a few ways we can do this after
we render. First, I’d like to ask if you could take
just a second to hit that like button below and consider subscribing if you haven’t
already. Thank you, thank you, thank you! If you have access to Photoshop, you can use
Photoshop to convert the image to a 360 sphere. If you have a similar image editor, it can
probably also do this. I’ll quickly show you the way in Photoshop
and then two other ways that can work if you don’t have Photoshop. In Photoshop, just open the image. Go to the menu at the top and under “3D”
find “Spherical Panorama.” Then, with the image layer selected, choose
“New Panorama Layer from Selected Layers.” It actually gives you a 360 degree scene we
can look around in. That’s pretty cool. Next, go to 3D - Spherical Panorama and then
“Export Spherical Panorama.” Although we can select from a bunch of file
types - Facebook only seemed to work when I used JPEGs and all the panoramas I see appear
to be JPEGs. So it may be the only type that works, let’s
just choose JPEG. Now the newly converted JPEG will look exactly
like it did before, but it has that important metadata labeling it as a 360 image. If we go to Facebook and upload it, it still
looks the same here, but it has this little icon. That icon means Facebook recognizes this as
a 360 image and will display it as one - which is exactly what we want. Ok, so what if you don’t have Photoshop? There are two other options. You can search for an EXIF fixer application
- there are a ton of free ones. These are simple programs that allow you to
edit an image’s metadata. Full disclosure, I’ve never actually used
one, but if you know about metadata from cameras, this would work. Or, we can go to one of the countless online
converters out there. Most of them are great, you simply upload
your original image. It converts it to a 360 file and then you
download it. There are a ton of free ones, you don’t
need to pay for this. I did find one that resized my image which
I didn’t like and another one added some branding to the metadata which I also didn’t
like. So, I will link to a free one in the description
that seems to work well. Alright let’s talk about creating a 360-degree
video. The fundamentals are the same. We need to be in Cycles, we need a 2 to 1
aspect ratio. The camera will be panoramic and set to equirectangular. I’ll assume you already know how to render
animations in Blender and you’ll do it the same way. If not, I have a full video on this if you
need it. Render out a completed video using the video
sequence editor or export the image strip to a video editing software program. I use Adobe Premiere and with Premiere, we
can create video for VR pretty easily. If you don’t have a video editor, you’ll
need to convert the video into 360 degree format just like we did with the still image. How I recommend doing this is by using the
Google spatial media metadata injector. That is a mouthful! It’s a free and simple download for Windows
or Mac. I will link to the official download page
from Google. We choose our video and click this “My video
is spherical” box. Press “Inject Metadata” then choose where
we want the new 360 video to be saved. In like a second, it’s added the required
data to our video. Now it should be good to go for Facebook,
YouTube and other media players. Windows media player also recognizes these
files and will show them in 360 degrees. There are more advanced things to explore
which are going to be for another video. Such as using stereoscopy settings. This can make a 3D image by actually rendering
multiple images the way the old school 3D glasses work. But this also works for virtual reality headsets. If you want to add stereo sound to the video,
that’s another area we can explore later. I used both Photoshop and Adobe Premiere in
this video and if you want to get a subscription to those, I have an affiliate link in the
description. Check out BrandonsDrawings.com for a growing
number of free Blender tutorials, guides and resources. Throw me a like and hit that subscribe button
if you’re feeling kind. And as always, stay creative!
