4 Steps to create a 360 VR illustration / painting in Photoshop (with pictures)
For months, I’ve been researching a perfect way to create 360 virtual reality illustration, and I realised that there not much of decent tutorial out there.
So I am humbly sharing my approach on attempting the 360 degree art.
This tutorial is meant for Artists and Designers with basic knowledge of illustration, if you are new to digital painting or concept art this demo might not be as helpful.
The 360 Mapping Method
One of the most common method to create a 360 degree environment is by using Skymap or Cubemap and map it on a 3D cube. This method was widely used for Game Development in the early days. However, the method I am sharing today is using Equirectangular Image which looks something like this:
Image above from http://photo.stackexchange.com/questions/73481/how-can-i-edit-equirectangular-images
Entering 2016, I realised that Equirectangular Image is now a common format for Youtube or Facebook to recognise as a 360 degree image. There are more platform than ever in displaying 360 art now. Algorithm in these platform process your Equirectangular Image and unwarp it into virtual sphere for 360 degree effect. We are not learning to paint our artwork on a curvature template, instead we are going to convert the curvature image into proper perspective image for easy painting.
Once you master the concept, you can create your very own Virtual Reality concept art!
Preparation:
Painting Software – I will be using Adobe Photoshop CC in this demo, I believe the same idea can apply to any version of Photoshop.
Equirectangular Conversion -The best plugin (that I’ve tried far) for these conversion is Flexify 2. I am using the trial version. This software can do variety of panoramic conversion, but for our case we only need Equirectangular to Horizontal Grid.
360 Preview – As a Motion Graphic designer, I am no stranger to Equirectangular Images. I often used it for my 3D production in Cinema 4D. If you wish to preview your 360 degree artwork during the production, you may try pannellum.org or simply upload your artwork to Facebook .
Step 1: Convert an Equirectangular Image to a Cubemap
Prepare yourself an Equirectangular Grid like one below and begin converting it into Cubemap.
Unfortunately Flexify 2 is not made for this purpose, upon conversion you will find these empty white spaces on both sides of your image, these white spaces may create a lot of troubles in future steps, so get rid of them by trimming the spaces.
Step 2 : Paint something on the Cubemap
Now you have a proper grid that are painting friendly, you may now begin to work on your magic!
SOME TIPS: Create a guide at the edge of each cube. Every time you draw something across an individual Cubemap, re-imagine your perpective into a new single point perspective. Always sees every Individual Cubemap as a new single-point-perspective-grid. Here is a simple gif that helps you to understand what I meant:
SOME MORE TIPS: During the sketching stage, I exported the artwork into Equirectangular Image ( which I am sharing how in the next step ) and preview it in 360 VR mode with Cinema 4D by adding the Equirectangular Image as texture to a sky object. I came back and forth between both software countless time to ensure the 360 illusion is perfect.
Take your time to get use to the perspective confusion, once you got a hang of it, everything will progress smoothly like a T-rex running on butter.
Step 3 :Convert the Cubemap back to Equirectangular Image
Begin converting your Cubemap back to Equirectangular Image that are virtual reality 360 friendly.
Trim the top and bottom white craps to achieve a perfect 2:1 aspect ratio for your Equirectangular Image.
Step 4: Edit the Metadata
Now your artwork are fresh from the oven and ready to upload to you preference Virtual Reality platform. In order to trick those platform to recognise your artwork as 360 Equirectangular Image, we will edit the metadata of the image itself.
Basically, you simply download this XMP Template and edit the metadata under file info in photoshop:
Detailed steps were perfectly described in Topher Mcculloch’s blog
Complete: Your Illustration in 360
That’s it, if you made it this far without confusion, please give yourself a cookie because you are obviously an advance user.
Check out the the completed 360 illustration of this demo here:
Send me me your artwork, I’d love to see how you inspire from this article!
Let’s have some discussion in the comment below if you have better method or ask any questions. Cheers guys, let’s just keep creating awesome work.
Great stuff. Nice and Simple. I need a crazy good website. Does that interest you? Cheryl Ng recommended you. If she recommended you, you must be good.
If so, call me on 0178971966. David Duffin.
Loving this! It’s so helpful. I am getting stuck in one spot: changing the metadata. I downloaded the .xmp, and imported the template into the raw data area, but Facebook still isn’t recognizing it as a 360 photo. Any tips or tricks for me?
Maybe you can check on the aspect ratio that has to be 2:1, and make sure the image is in decent size too, mine was 3839 X 1920.
Make sure you use “Save As…” and not “Save for Web”.
Also, for Facebook the recommended size is 6000×3000 pixels. See https://facebook360.fb.com/360-photos/
Fantastic project – drawing on a cubemap is an awesome way to go. It seems to me that you can just skip step one by providing your cubemap grid straightaway.
Also, I wonder if you’ve have you seen my take on drawing directly on an equirectangular map:
https://dmswart.com/2016/06/28/drawing-a-panorama/
This is beyond amazing! Thanks so much for sharing. What is inspiring is the creative stylised colourful illustrations. VR can come in all flavours!
This is what I am looking for and thank you very much
Thank you so much for the tutorial!
But if there’s any chance I can make this in Adobe Illustrator? Because I recently draw in Illustrator and I don’t really best friend with Photoshop when it comes to drawing. I hope you read and respond my comment.
Thanks 🙂
I am sorry but this only applies for Illustrator, you can use AI for the illustration and Photoshop for the conversion though 😀
It’s the first tutorial I find in which it is suggested to work on a cubic map: this was my idea all along, you beat me to actually publishing it in a tutorial 🙂 thumbs up for the result! I’ll publish my own tutorial and results soon, and I’ll make sure to link to here.
Looking forward! 😀
I must say you have very interesting posts here. Your page should go viral.
Thanks for the tutorial, you’re saving my life.
I’m from Venezuela and I do not speak English, I’m using the Google translator so please excuse the grammatical mistakes. All perfect except that my Photoshop (CC 2015.5) does not recognize the flexify plugin, I have searched tutorials on how to install it correctly but I have not managed to get the program to recognize it. Please help me! Many thanks.
I am sorry to hear that Damaris! I’d love to help but unfortunately technical issues of Flexify is beyond my control. I wish you eventually fix that!
Great post, my name is ron spinabella and i run a great blog and twitter account. I’m going to repost it for my followers.
I quite like reading through an article that will make people think. Also, thank you for permitting me to comment!
Simple steps! Thank you! We’ll need to create a VR piece for work and your blog is extremely helpful. Also, I love your artwork!
Hi there! I’d like to THANK YOU SO MUCH for this tutorial! I managed to make my first 360 illustration and I am SO happy, even though my edges are not perfect lined! THANK YOU!!!
https://www.facebook.com/chibibatch/photos/a.732060410182297.1073741830.731665930221745/1433088423412822/?type=3&theater
Looking awesome! Great work 🙂
Hello! I really like your tutorial and it helped me a lot to create my own work. I’m writing ask if i could translate your tutorial to Chinese and re-post it to Weibo.com for non-commercial use..I’ll keep all your links and credits if you think it’s ok~
Sure! As long as you link this post as the original article. Do keep me posted on your translated weibo article, I will help you in social posting too!
You’re the best! Thanks 🙂
Thanks so much for the clear and accurate tutorial. I created my first 360VR cartoon, and hope to do many more! http://unicyclecreative.com/portfolio/360vr-cartoons/?id=1689
That’s awesome Lorne!
worked like a charm, though i get some white lines forming a cube in the endpicture.
Is there a reason I can’t just start with a cube map and then convert it to equirectangular? Converting it twice seems redundant, but technical stuff was never my jam.
Yes you may start from Cube Map directly, I did it this way in order to properly preview and make adjustment accordingly.
Hey! What are the measurements for the rulers? I am new to photoshop, so I don’t know if im asking a stupid question… Is it in inches? and what are the dimensions? Thank you!
Hey sorry i meant the canvas size, not the rulers… I hope you can answer my question!!
As long as it is on 2:1 ratio, my size was 3839px X 1920px !
I want to do this with Flyers like for instance a wedding or a nightclub? What would be a good start?
What do you mean Micah?
An outstanding share! I have just forwarded this onto a colleague who was doing a little homework on this. And he in fact ordered me dinner due to the fact that I found it for him… lol. So allow me to reword this…. Thank YOU for the meal!! But yeah, thanx for spending some time to talk about this subject here on your website.|
Hi Lai, Thanks so much for this tutorial!
Here’s a link of the 3d illustration I made with the help of your work! https://www.trouw.nl/redactie/lutherjaar/#/pano/luther/overzicht/werkkamer/
Awesome job Gemma! Looking so good 😀
Do you have a walk-thru doing this with photos?
I should make one! Thanks for the suggestion.
Great post!
Thanks 4 share.
Hi! Thank you so much for writing this! I was wondering if you have tips on getting it onto a google headset? I can publish to facebook but I really want to see it through something like Google Cardboard. Struggling to do this, any help would be awesome!
I think you can view it in fullscreen in facebook to use it for google headset?
Great tutorial. Here’s my entry. I found that some parts are easier to create in cube projection mode, as you suggest, but other parts are easier in equirectangular mode.
I also noticed that, while it requires you to upload an equirectangular image, the image displayed by Facebook is actually an array of cube projections.
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10215030131608139&set=a.10215030092127152.1073741871.1275487936&type=3&theater