Can Photoshop CS4 do this?

[James Hooey]

[QUOTE=Jim Andrada;971365]Checked with Adobe - I was right in my original supposition. No deal.
QUOTE]

Too bad, never hurts to try though.

WOW though, didn't think that this thread was going to be any sort of motivation for someone to looking into upgrading to CS4. I hope you enjoy the software. I had been a Vegas Video user since Sonic Foundry days and finally moved to the Adobe Production suite with this latest CS4 release. I bought the suite mainly for After Effects, Photoshop and Illustrator and am finding them all to be top notch apps!!

Something else of interest I found while fooling with PSE today was that you can download 3D shapes from Google 3D warehouse in Collada or .kmz formats and manipulate, texture, light and create videos for compositing directly in Photoshop! It's probably far from the functionality of a true 3D app like Cinema 4D but it's pretty cool considering that Photoshop is essentially photo manipulation software.

All the best,
James Hooey

[Jim Andrada]

I also discovered that Cinema 4D supports Collada import/export as a result of looking around trying to answer your question.

The thing that tipped me over the edge to get CS4 was the recommendation by Cinema 4D tech support. Those guys are really good and have never steered me wrong yet, so generally if they suggest it I do it! And I was definitely planning to upgrade sooner or later - this just made it sooner.

I asked a simple question of them once about how to do an animation of liquid swirling around in a glass and they pointed me to the RealFlow program. I got it and it is superb. Learning curve is straight up, unfortunately, but the things you can do with it are amazing - for example have a wave come crashing down onto a beach and sweep away a pier and other structures, or get ice cubes floating around in a glass of liquid and bouncing off the sides of the glass, or have a ship hit an iceberg and sink convincingly, etc. Not sure if it was used in Titanic, but I believe some of the scenes in the remake of Poseidon Adventure were done with it.

This is just a small exercise I did trying out a couple of ideas I want to incorporate into an animation/video

http://www.j-e-andrada.com/SlowWaterfall.mov

By the way, I listed my copy of CS3 and AE CS3 on Amazon and we'll see what happens.

[James Hooey]

Originally Posted by Jim Andrada

This is just a small exercise I did trying out a couple of ideas I want to incorporate into an animation/video

http://www.j-e-andrada.com/SlowWaterfall.mov

Very impressive virtual water action. Curious as to what sort of work you are doing with the water/physics modelling you create?

Good luck with the sale of CS3 as well, it should sell no problem. For the CS4 purchase was it an upgrade path or a completely new license?

Lastly, you mentioned earlier in this thread about an example of 360 panoramic work you have done. I started a new thread regarding pano stuff, if you get a chance I'd be very interested in seeing some examples.

All the best,
James Hooey

[Jerry Norman]

Hi James. I hope you will see this response. I ran across your interesting thread while looking for a way to create texture wraps that I can apply to spheres in Swift 3d. I use Photoshop Extended CS4 and am trying to understand the workflow you used. Here is what I am trying to do; any suggestions you can offer are appreciated.

1. I have an image that is a composite of 18 photos arranged as a picture wall (i.e., 3x6 image matrix).

2. I wish to wrap this around a sphere so that the area at the poles isn't distorted.

3. At one time I had a tool that would take a standard photo and "sphereize" it to achieve this. I think that is what you are getting by unwrapping your photo from a sphere in PSE.

4. I've read the help on 3d in PSE but don't quite get how you were able to unwrap to a 2d image.

Jerry

Originally Posted by James Hooey

Hi Jim and everyone else who stopped by on this thread and offered advice and thoughts....I'm happy to say that Photoshop Extended CS4 can do what I needed, here is the quick test results....

This has some minor adjustments done to the image compared to the first example shown higher up in this thread. Notice in particular the top and bottom edges (the polar areas if it were a 3D image). I did a bare minimum of work to clone out and test the workflow in PS so it's nothing fancy but it's seamless and not nearly as distorted as it was originally when mapped to ccSphere.

So....the workflow I was trying to achieve works fine in PSE. Specifically there are a number of controls for mapping textures to 3D objects within PSE CS4 (you can have up to 9 texture maps per 3D mesh I believe and can edit the textures either while mapped to the 3D mesh or 'unwrapped' as a flat 2D plane. Simply clicking on the diffuse texture layer of the 3D sphere allows you to see the 2D image and easily select it and save it as a new file.

This all stems from my inexperience with 3D software, principles and probably the biggest error people make most often RTFM!! It's laid out fairly plainly in the PSE .pdf on how to work with textures, meshes and all things 3D within PSE. I had simply put the cart about 2 miles in front of the horse one evening thinking about the concept of 3D planets.

Jim....don't underestimate your help for a second, with your clarification that I was attempting to work with UV maps....it was that nugget of info that help me both confirm some info I had been reading about 3D principles and how to research the whole situation better. In regards to 360 panoramas I'll start a thread with a few of the questions I have so as to keep the forum tidy.