Environmake – Blender Addon download

Environmake is definitely an amazing tool to have in your toolset to use in your work. Environmake is a Blender add-on, by Albert Bozesan, that creates simple 3D environments in seconds, extrapolating the volumes through a displacement calculation from the images. The Environmake presentation video shows how simple but interesting and effective this tool is when applied to VR textures, HDRI maps, etc.

How to Create 360 Displaced Spheres from Textures

Just insert an equirectangular texture with a depth map to generate a basic volumetric environment, a very useful technique for playing with image parallax, for not-too-complex scenes.

Note: This addon does not generate meshes, the addon has been tested in Blender 3.4.1 on Windows.

Download Environmake – Blender Addon

Environmake – Blender Addon – Installation

1. Download the addon’s .py file.
2. Open Blender, go to Edit > Preferences.
3. In the Preferences window, navigate to the Add-ons tab.
4. Click the Install button and select the downloaded .py file.
5. Enable the addon by checking the checkbox next to its name.

Usage

Once the addon is installed and enabled, you’ll find a new panel in the 3D Viewport’s N panel, under the “Environmake” tab.

Step 1: Load your images

In the addon panel, you’ll see two fields: “Equirectangular Texture” and “Depth Map”.

• Equirectangular Texture: Click the folder icon to load your equirectangular image. This will be used as the base texture for your environment.
• Depth Map: Click the folder icon to load a depth map for your environment. This will be used to create the displacement.

Step 2: Choose a shading mode

Select a shading mode from the dropdown menu:

• Emission: The equirectangular texture’s color information will be used as an emission shader. This option will use your texture as-is, making it impervious to any lights or shadows in your scene. This is best if you don’t want to change anything or fiddle around with lights in your scene.
• Base Color: The equirectangular texture’s color information will be used as a base color for the material. Choose this option if you want to use further lights to influence the environment. But be aware: if you have any shadows baked into your texture, they won’t change. Of course.

Step 3: Generate the environment

Click the “Generate” button to create your 3D environment. The addon will generate a 360 panoramic sphere with displacement based on your equirectangular texture and depth map.