Using Thea to create cube maps

Cubic faces with Thea render:

Let’s get started

Import a scene into Thea, set “current view” to “front”, mount “current view” and move the view to were the first camera needs to be, do not rotate the view side to side or up and down. (Select the front view, this will usually take you outside the model, open the transform tool, note the camera rotation will be -90.00. 0.00, 0.00 Mount current view and use the scroll wheel to move forward/back and right click and hold will move up, down left, right, the camera rotation should stay the same) When you are happy with the camera view create a new camera, set the camera values: Resolution 512x512 or other power of two values, i.e. 1024x1024, 2048x2048 Film height 25.00 Focal length 12.5

Select the render tab, in “General” turn off “motion blur”, select the “Animation” tab and set “End frame” to 5

On the top bar select “tool” and the Transform tool and the animation tool

Now to turn the camera:

Change to top view and parallel view, select “camera and the rotate gizmo Set a key frame at Frame 0, this is our front view Advance to the next frame (frame 1), rotate the camera so Z in the transform tool is -90, and create a key frame at 1 Advance to the next frame (frame 2), rotate the camera so Z in the transform tool is -180, and create a key frame at 2 (note: you may notice the value may change to-179.999, this is nothing to worry about, this was done to avoid a conflict when 180 is selected, its +/- the tipping point for 179.999 and -179..999 and it stops a Thea bug rotating cameras) Advance to the next frame (frame 3), rotate the camera so Z in the transform tool is 90, and create a key frame at 3 Advance to the next frame (frame 4), rotate the camera so Z in the transform tool is 0 back in the front view, switch the view to left side view, then rotate the camera up to X0, and create a key frame at 4 Advance to the next frame (frame 5), rotate the camera down to X 180, and create a key frame at 5

Now we have our animated camera, under the animation tab set “render Frames to “all”

Set Thea away rendering, if you are using TR1/2 set a pass limit, you will be prompted to save the frames.

Creating a new camera location.

Make sure the original camera is set at frame O Right click on the camera and select, Motion, Preset, save as and save our motion Change to “current view” Create a new camera and move it to the desired location and right click, motion and apply the preset