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Panoramic Rendering

Mode: All Modes

Panel: Render Context → Render

Hotkey: F10

Description

To obtain nice panoramic renderings, up to 5 times (!) a full 360° view of the horizon, Blender provides an automatic procedure.

Options

"Pano" Button.

You can, by decreasing the focal length of your camera, get a wider field of view, up to 173° (length of 1mm), but at cost of huge distortions in the image ("fish-eye" effect); furthermore, you won't be able to get wider than these 173°.

But Blender is able to render an image showing a 1800° panorama (5 full rotations) of the scene, as if the camera was rotating around its Y axis, with few distortions. For rendering a "real" panorama, enable the Pano button. Henceforth, the behaviour of some render and camera settings are changed:

Camera
Lens:: A 5 (mm) lens setting gives a 360° pano. The horizontal field of view is now proportional to this setting: 10mm gives a 180° pano, 2.5mm gives a 720° pano (two turns), 1mm gives a 1800° pano (5 turns), etc...; This change only affects the horizontal field of view: the vertical one behaves as usual (i.e. it is locked to 173° at maximum!). This means that if you want to render a vertical pano, you have to lay the camera on its side.

Rendering
Xparts: Defines the number of "shots" aligned side by side: at minimum to 10 if you want a "correct" pano; the higher it is, the better is the result (lower distortions); the max number of shots is the width of the rendered picture, in pixels, divided by eight.
Yparts: Its behaviour isn't changed from a "standard" rendering.
SizeX, SizeY: As long as SizeX > SizeY, the horizontal field of view stays the same, as defined by Lens: (e.g., for a 5mm lens, 360°): the vertical field of view is proportional to the ratio height/width.; If SizeX < SizeY, the vertical field of view is locked to its maximum (173° for a Lens: of 1mm, 145° for a Lens: of 5mm, etc.): the horizontal field of view is proportional to the ratio width/height (e.g., for a rendered picture twice as high as wide, and a Lens: of 5, we have an horizontal 180° pano, rather than a 360° one).

Examples

All this is quite complex, so here are some examples, all based on the same scene, to try to clarify it:

Test scene.

Examples of non-panoramic rendering

Non-panoramic rendering with Lens: = 1mm (horizontal field of view: 173°).	Non-panoramic rendering with Lens: = 5mm (horizontal field of view: 145°).
Non-panoramic rendering with Lens: = 10mm (horizontal field of view: 116°).

Examples of panoramic rendering

Panoramic rendering with Lens: = 5mm, and Xparts = 1. There's no difference from a rendering with the same lens without the Pano option!	Panoramic rendering with Lens: = 5mm, and Xparts = 5. The distortions are still obvious, and the horizontal field of view is not yet full 360°...
Panoramic rendering with Lens: = 5mm, and Xparts = 10. Nearly perfect.	Panoramic rendering with Lens: = 5mm, and Xparts = 90. Compare with the previous one: very few differences...

Rendu panoramique avec Lens: = 5mm, and Xparts = 90, and twice as high as wide: we have a 180° pano instead of a 360° one, with a vertical field of view of 145 °!