b2k Addon Tutorial

In this tutorial I want to show you how to use the b2k addon.

The b2k-addon is an addon for blender. It is useful if you want to make a 3D virtual tour with krpano from a 3D-model or 3D-scan.

Setup

Open your Model or 3D-scan in Blender.

You can download the blend file for free if you want to follow the tutorial with the files. All materials are ready for rendering with the eevee renderer.

Place cameras where you want to render panoramas. Here I have placed four PanoCamAdder cameras inside the model. But you can also use a ’normal‘ camera, if you like.

When everything is ready, first make some ’normal‘ test renders to determine the render time and check the image quality.

Rendering

Open the b2k-addon and set the Size.

The b2k-addon will render equirectangular panoramas, if cycles renderer is selected. Otherwise six cube faces will be rendered. Size 1000 will render 1000×1000 cubefaces or 1000×500 panoramas.

Check North to render all panoramas well leveled and with same direction. This is needed for creating 3D-depthmap tours.

If everything is fine, select one ore more cameras and hit the render button.

An info popup informs you about the number of images that will be rendered.

Press OK to start the rendering process. The popup disappears when the rendering is complete.

Currently it is NOT possible to stop the rendering process before it is finished! So please always do some ’normal‘ test renderings before you start rendering a set of cube faces or animation frames to check render time and image quality!

I used the eevee renderer here. So 24 cubfaces were rendered.

Pass all cubfaces to the krpano CubeToSphere tool to convert them to equirectanguar.

The location values for each rendered panorama will be printed to the console and also stored in a txt-file inside Blender. Open the text-editor in Blender and search for the krpanovalues.txt

Preparing the model for krpano

Select the model and click Object/Apply/All-Transforms to ensure that all position values are 0.0 and the scale is 1.0.

Now you can export the model as usual.

Include the 3D depth map in the Krpano scene

krpvalues.txt

center="0.1333858072757721,2.675583600997925,7.7861738204956055"
ox="-778.62" oy="-267.56" oz="13.34"

<scene name="scene_MyPano_1" title="MyPano_1" onstart="" thumburl="panos/MyPano_1.tiles/thumb.jpg" lat="" lng="" heading="">	
		<control bouncinglimits="calc:image.cube ? true : false" />
		<view hlookat="0.0" vlookat="0.0" fovtype="MFOV" fov="120" maxpixelzoom="1.0" fovmin="70" fovmax="140" limitview="auto" />
		<preview url="panos/MyPano_1.tiles/preview.jpg" />
		<image ox="-778.62" oy="-267.56" oz="13.34">
			<cube url="panos/MyPano_1.tiles/%s/l%l/%v/l%l_%s_%v_%h.jpg" multires="512,1024,2048" />
			<depthmap url="panos/model/model.depth"
				enabled="true"
				rendermode="3dmodel"
				background="none"
				scale="100"
				offset="0.0"
				subdiv=""
				encoding="gray"
				axis="+x+y+z"
				cull="front"
				center="0.1333858072757721,2.675583600997925,7.7861738204956055"
				/>
		</image>
	</scene>