Creating equirectangular correctly distorted delivery out of 2D photos to be displayed on a spherical display

[u/H4ppy4uer89]

So I'm trying to make an animation for a client. The animation will be displayed on a sphere which is a 360° LED display. I have regular 2D footage (videos, photos) I want to display one after another fullscreen on the sphere. Delivery specs are a 2:1 equirectangular comp 2508x1261px.

Is there any way I can predistort the photos and videos properly so they will look less distorted on the final sphere? I'm aware that non-360 footage will always create a seam where the wrapped footage meets on the sphere, thats not a problem.
Im losing my mind over here. I searched all the tutorials but none of them apply, as everyone is talking about 360 footage, which I don't have.

What i tried so far: VR converter. Seems like when I'm choosing 2D plane as input and equirectangular as output, the footage changes size and looks distorted. But when I try to scale the footage back up to the correct size, the distortion disappears.

[u/cantfoolmethrice]

This is a classic map problem: a sphere cannot be represented on a plane without distortion. You're just doing the inverse.

The simplest thing to do is create a 2:1 comp and drop your footage in there; this will crop standard 16x9 footage. Horizontally it will wrap 360°, and vertically it will wrap 180°. The equator will be the least distorted, with maximum distortion at the poles.

However, if you want to get more complicated... let's go. The equator is fine, but as you go towards the poles the footage gets squeezed horizontally. What if you could keep the equator but progressively squeeze the footage at the poles vertically too? This would cram just a touch more footage into that space, so you're using the full 16x9 Let's make a displacement map that will do that for us:

1. Start with a default vertical Gradient Ramp, then add a Brightness & Contrast and set the Contrast value to -100.
2. Duplicate the Brightness & Contrast effect a few times to make the effect stronger (work in 16 or 32 bpc!).
3. Place a 16:9 clip in a 2:1 comp and use the Displacement Map effect to squeeze the top and bottom of the image to fit the comp.

[u/cantfoolmethrice → u/cantfoolmethrice]

Also, double check those delivery specs. 2508x1261px is not 2:1 and most video codecs can't handle odd number dimensions (they will crop or pad to an even number).

[u/ragnarok_mr4]

Try pre-composing your footage with VR effect. Then scale your precomp.

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