The RealiTools QTVR Panorama plug-in is a Shader plug-in,
and can be activated from the Surfaces panel. It lets you
render a true, complete 360 degree view of your scene. QuickTime VR is a way to make pseudo-virtual reality
environments. They're different from true VR in that you can't walk
around at will. However, you can usually look around at will. Just imagine a still
camera being able to rotate around inside a texture mapped sphere and you'll get the general idea.
When QuickTime VR does its thing, it applies a certain
type of distortion to a 360-degree panoramic image to make it look like
a regular picture. If you looked at the actual image behind the QTVR
environment, you'd see that it's pretty warped. In the case of real
environments, you take a lot of photographs and mesh them together to get
the 360 degree view. Fortunately, 3D environments are a little more
flexible.
To use this plug-in, you simply create a polygon
(any geometry you want, really, but single polygons render fastest), and
move it so it completely obscures the camera view. Apply this plug-in
to its surface, and turn on Unseen by Rays in the Objects
panel. When you render, you'll get a 360 degree view of your environment,
from the current camera position.
Here is a quick tip. Because QTVR "panorama" images tend to be enlarged significantly,
you'd probably want to create a high-resolution image. However, that
can take quite some time to render. To make things go faster, render
a medium-resolution (640 x 480) version of the panorama. Then, load
that image in as the backdrop image, and display it in the Layout background.
Then, use that image to estimate the size of the limited region settings
for the high-res version.