[Radiance-general] panotools to map textures, patterns etc?

[Lars O. Grobe]

Hi!

Georg Mischler wrote:

> Automatic mappings on single geometric primitives would be
> relatively simple, but also not very useful. In most cases,
> mappings will be applied to a group of primitives together,
> eg. all the polygon segments of a curved wall. There's no
> good way to automatically determine the axis of a cylindrical
> mapping without user interaction in such a case.

Ok, I didn't want "automatic mapping" (something like this might be done
in the modeler, as I can find the axis of a cylinder quite easy there -
so this is what makes conrad interesting, as it exports 3ds-mappings).
What I think about is a way to create a static map for the object, so
that I can edit the mapping for this object until it fits and save this
pic-file. So I would not have the calculations in cal-files any more. Of
course this means a loss of flexibility, maybe it's simply better to
hold the complete object as an oct-file. 

> I can only speak for myself, but enabling casual users to
> place mappings without effort is not very high on my list of
> priorities.

Mappings are usually not the most important feature in radiance at all.

> (especially after buying a certain piece of software on Ebay)

;-) this "piece of software" is happily running on my laptop now!
There's just one reason for my question. I am working on a model of a
church. In fact, mappings are not the most important for our project,
but we have documented most important surfaces. So we have photos of the
domes, what AFAIK means a planar projection of a spherical surface. I
wonder how I would map this easily, if it gets important... ooops....
might it be that I could simply map it as on a planar surface in this
case...?

CU, Lars.