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I'm working on a project that requires me to project a picture spherically around a dodecahegon and then get images of each of the twelve faces so I can make bitmap files of the design each face contains.

I first tried setting up twelve cameras and pretty much just taking screenshots of the views, but getting the cameras oriented in exactly the same way so there was no skewing in the pictures was nearly impossible.

As a second resort, I tried to unwrap the mesh and lay the picture that I projected to the mesh on the UV map, but since it was flat, the faces didn't contain the same design on the UV map compared to the Spherical Projection.

So, is there any way I can get precise, non-skewed views of the rendered version of each face of my mesh?

This is my first time using Blender, so if I overlooked something simple, or didn't explain something correctly, let me know and I'll try to clarify :)

Edit: Here are some pictures of what I'm trying to do. I want 12 separate pictures of the outside faces as they show in my rendered view. So far I took 3 photos of the faces, two of which you can see below Face 1 Face 2

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  • $\begingroup$ I'd center it on 0,0,0, put a camera at 0,0,0, and rotate the camera n+1(12/360º) to get an inside face of the dodecagon cylinder. If you need the outside, move the camera some distance along its local z-axis and it should be facing the face. Rinse and repeat for all faces. This may also be useful: blender.stackexchange.com/questions/14232/… A drawing of what you want to achieve might be helpful too. :) $\endgroup$
    – Ron Proctor
    Sep 30, 2016 at 4:54
  • $\begingroup$ As said @RonProctor, you should add a drawing, because what you mean by 'project' here can be interpreted in at least two ways : do you want a continuous projected image or do you want 12 separated flat projections ? $\endgroup$
    – lemon
    Sep 30, 2016 at 8:37
  • $\begingroup$ @RonProctor : That's more or less what I tried doing at the beginning (like the pictures above), but the problem that I was having was getting the same exact rotation as well as distance from each face for each camera. Your equation for the rotation helps a lot, and finding the distance from the face shouldn't be too hard. If there's no easier way of getting this done, I'll probably end up trying this again :) $\endgroup$
    – DamagedPixie
    Sep 30, 2016 at 12:09
  • $\begingroup$ @lemon: I've added pictures of what I'm trying to do $\endgroup$
    – DamagedPixie
    Sep 30, 2016 at 12:11
  • $\begingroup$ Oh. That looks like a dodecahedron. I wrongly assumed you meant a twelve sided cylinder. Check out that link I posted earlier—it will show you how to get custom normal orientations for each face. Do you need to shoot this from the inside or outside? $\endgroup$
    – Ron Proctor
    Sep 30, 2016 at 14:54

1 Answer 1

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I suggest using custom transform orientations and a track-to constraint to get the cameras pointed at the faces. Please see the demonstration here: https://youtu.be/1Mu6loumKj0

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    $\begingroup$ Could I ask another question? When I got to take the pictures, I'm getting a lot of glare from my light source, like what you can see in the two pictures I posted before. Is there any way to get rid of this? $\endgroup$
    – DamagedPixie
    Oct 1, 2016 at 18:19
  • $\begingroup$ It depends on how you're getting your image onto the mesh, but my first thought would be to change the shader type to emission. (Please post a screen capture of your material setup if this doesn't work.) $\endgroup$
    – Ron Proctor
    Oct 1, 2016 at 19:26
  • $\begingroup$ I turned on Cycles then added an emission node to my material, but it just showed all white in the render. Then when I went back to Blender Render it completely disappeared in the render, but would show in the solids view. Did I do something wrong? $\endgroup$
    – DamagedPixie
    Oct 2, 2016 at 0:48
  • $\begingroup$ Yes. :) Can you post a screen capture of your material nodes in Cycles (or Blender Render)? Edit: Can you also show an example of the source image you're mapping to the dodecahedron? (I tend to recommend Cycles for this sort of thing because it can be optimized to render simple emission very quickly.) $\endgroup$
    – Ron Proctor
    Oct 2, 2016 at 1:18
  • $\begingroup$ Here's a capture of my screen when I add the Emission node: i.stack.imgur.com/XoB8O.jpg And here's the picture I'm wrapping: i.stack.imgur.com/gtZPe.jpg $\endgroup$
    – DamagedPixie
    Oct 2, 2016 at 1:33

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