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I'm trying to make a 360-degree panoramic photo for Facebook. Example shown below

enter image description here

However, when I upload a photo made with blender it does not seem to detect that it is a photo made to do this. I set my camera up so it would render images based off the docs and this question.

How can I achieve what I want to do?

If it makes a difference I have Blender 2.78a and I am using the Cycles Render

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    $\begingroup$ Most likely you need to include the relevant exif tag to indicate the correct image type for facebook to interpret as a 360 image. See facebook.com/notes/eric-cheng/…. In particular, you could try using exiftool to add the projection type with "exiftool -ProjectionType="equirectangular" photo.jpg". $\endgroup$ – Rich Sedman Feb 22 '17 at 15:37
  • $\begingroup$ @RichSedman That sounds right thank you. I'll look into it $\endgroup$ – Dan Feb 22 '17 at 15:41
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    $\begingroup$ Hi @Dan. You'll need to ensure to use JPG file format for this - Facebook seems to ignore the ProjectionType for PNGs. I've added an answer including the 'exiftool' command line to use. $\endgroup$ – Rich Sedman Feb 23 '17 at 14:22
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For Facebook to interpret an image as a 360-degree panorama, it needs to have the following properties :

  1. It must be in 2:1 aspect ratio. eg, 4000x2000 pixels
  2. It should be in JPG format (it seems that the panorama settings are ignored for PNGs!)
  3. It needs the EXIF tag 'ProjectionType' set to 'equirectangular'.

For more information see this Facebook link about Editing 360 Photos & Injecting Metadata.

To achieve this, once you have rendered your image (using an Equirectangular camera - which should be oriented level with the horizon rather than tilted) and saved it in JPG format, use a tool such as 'exiftool' (or another tool that allows you to manually specify EXIF tags) to set ProjectionType - eg, with the following command line :

    exiftool -ProjectionType="equirectangular" <filename>.jpg

This will add the relevant EXIF tag to the image (saving the original as an '_old' file). The resultant file should now be successfully interpreted by Facebook as a panoramic image.

Panorama image in Facebook

EDIT : Here's an additional source of useful information - http://atterer.org/tech/android-exif-tags-xmp-pano-panorama-exiftool, including additional tags that should allow you to tweak the panoramic view as desired (NOTE : I don't know which of these are actually honored by Facebook, but worth a try) - replace the settings with your own image dimensions, etc. :

    exiftool -UsePanoramaViewer=True -ProjectionType=equirectangular  PoseHeadingDegrees=180.0 -CroppedAreaLeftPixels=0 -FullPanoWidthPixels=8000 -CroppedAreaImageHeightPixels=4000 -FullPanoHeightPixels=4000 -CroppedAreaImageWidthPixels=8000 -CroppedAreaTopPixels=0 -LargestValidInteriorRectLeft=0 -LargestValidInteriorRectTop=0 -LargestValidInteriorRectWidth=8000 -LargestValidInteriorRectHeight=4000 filename.jpeg
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  • $\begingroup$ Thank you. I will try this in a few hours when I get home $\endgroup$ – Dan Feb 23 '17 at 14:52
  • $\begingroup$ Where you have the numbers 4000 and 8000 should I change them to 3000 and 6000 as the page you linked said 6000 x 3000 was the max resolution $\endgroup$ – Dan Feb 23 '17 at 14:57
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    $\begingroup$ I've only actually tried it up to 4000x2000 and that sample command-line needs the relevant image dimensions in place of the 4000 and 8000, but, yes, you're right - the page does mention those maximum sizes. I got it working with just ProjectionType=equirectangular and didn't need to specify the rest. I mentioned those others just in case they are helpful for tweaking the result (such as specifying the initial direction or different cropping) but I don't know if Facebook even takes note of those others if you specify them (but they might be useful!). Best to leave them out if unsure. $\endgroup$ – Rich Sedman Feb 23 '17 at 15:05
  • $\begingroup$ Ah okay. Thank you for your help with this :) $\endgroup$ – Dan Feb 23 '17 at 15:06

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