Environment texture WON'T RENDER ADJUSTMENTS

[SP4NKER]

I've googled for hours to no avail, I've bumped into this issue on other threads and apparently everyone can solve it but me.
People say "oh your viewport should look exactly the same as your render" and I wish that was true. This is all on 2.8+ and my god this version is killing me.

Step 1: I adjust the ENV texture with Texture Coordinate (generated) > Mapping (texture) > Image texture (spherical) > RGB curve (trivial) > Background (trivial) > World Output

2: Make it look nice, wow that's great, bake the Cubemap and indirect lighting, stunning. Press F12.

3: NOTHING. The background should be black with white windows. But there is only black.

Saw this similarly in another .blend, when adjusting a background, NO changes were made in render. Background showed up, but was not adjusted.

I am using EEVEE. I do NOT have transparency enabled. I do NOT have misaligned nodes. I do NOT have Scene Lights and Scene world disabled-- this is all about the render. Not the viewport.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2478216317

[Mio Rin]

Environment maps tend to use equirectangular mapping, not spherical.
Try changing that on the texture node.

[SP4NKER]

Originally posted by Mio Rin:

Environment maps tend to use equirectangular mapping, not spherical.
Try changing that on the texture node.

Thank you for stopping by

Unfortunately I still suffer the same issue, despite warping the mapping in the viewport when changing the layout in any way. The final render still refuses to acknowledge any adjustments.

I would upload images, but it's exactly as I describe it with words. If it helps though I can upload them

[The Renderer]

So if you go into rendered viewport shading mode and into camera view (hit numpad 0), it looks different than the image you get with F12? Screenshots of those two, please.

[Pte Jack]

Your Texture coordinate node is coming out of the Generated output. What happens if you pull it out of the Window Output? Does that fix your problem?

https://i.imgur.com/djcXXBm.png

[The Renderer]

Generated is fine. It doesn't matter anyways, even if his env texture looks completely broken, it should still look identically broken in the camera rendered view and in the render itself. Same applies to the equirectangular vs sphere discussion above.

[Pte Jack]

Originally posted by The Renderer:

Generated is fine. It doesn't matter anyways, even if his env texture looks completely broken, it should still look identically broken in the camera rendered view and in the render itself. Same applies to the equirectangular vs sphere discussion above.

Then I'm doing something wrong as well because this is what I get for a render if I use the Generated output node using this same set up.

https://i.imgur.com/HxqtNzk.png

Edit:

The only output node that gives me a rendered background is Window.

https://i.imgur.com/ruuKOG2.png

[SP4NKER]

https://imgur.com/a/C7X1srD

These four images are perfect examples. They are all from camera's perspective; viewport render and then f12 render.

[Pte Jack]

Spanker,

How are you adding the speed burring effect to the environment mapping? I'm trying to learn that technique.

[SP4NKER]

Originally posted by Pte Jack:

Spanker,

How are you adding the speed burring effect to the environment mapping? I'm trying to learn that technique.

The way I did it isn't very intuitive, I just stretched scale on the mapping vector. But it wouldn't work in the actual render cause, well, I'll tell you.

I found yet again the beauty and atrocity of user-error on blender.

I had been perplexed of another symptom I didn't understand, when in the actual render my image was darker than it was in viewport. People said add more lights, but that would blind me in editing. It should look the same-- I know it should-- why doesn't it?

Well, as it turns out, things do not look the same across viewport and render when objects are hidden in the collection.

That's right, I was experimenting with enormous reflective cubes to try and get reflective effects (and make ENV maps), and decided I'd set the case aside for a bit, and hid it. Forgot about it forever. So the cube was, indeed, reflecting the environment, as you can see in the corvette picture. It was also blocking some lights from reaching the scene, hence the darkness.

Same with the picture of the man, though he's being surrounded by a massive, vantablack sphere. I tried the same little experiment twice, temporarily scrapping it, twice.

I just want to press the importance of stupid tiny things like this. I googled for hours to no avail and finally clutched for help only to feel so bloody, incredibly stupid. Who else would have left a giant cube around their scene? Bloody hell, me.

I know there's no actual takeaway from this, other than the obvious, so I'm sorry for dragging you blokes into this. I genuinely can't believe this.

[Pte Jack]

DOH!! LOL.

I want to thank you though, I actually learned something from this. I've been having problems just getting backgrounds just to appear, so this gave me an opportunity to play around a bit.

So Thanks!

[The Renderer]

Edit: Lol, you found the issue already. I'll leave this here anyways in case someone has other issues:

Alright, no idea what either of you is doing. ;)

The following produces correct results. Try if you can match it:

Start a new scene
Got to Shader Nodes
Change them to "World"
Do the following setup:
Texture Coordinate (generated) -> Mapping -> Environment Texture -> Background -> World Output
Open any hdri from hdrihaven in the environment texture node.

Set the renderer to Eevee (optional), forget about any other render settings.

Go into camera view and set your viewport to rendered. You should see the cube and the hdri background. F12. You should get the exact same pic. Optionally change the Mapping to rotate or scale or whatever the env texture. Compare again. Should still be the same.

Does this work at least?

[Pte Jack]

This might be it right here.

Texture Coordinate (generated) -> Mapping -> "ENVIRONMENT" Texture -> Background -> World Output

I'm just using a standard image texture. I'll check this out when I get back from getting my Covid vaccine shot.

[The Renderer]

Yeah, that might be it. Good catch.

[Pte Jack]

Renderer,
I think it depends on what the OP is trying to achieve with their background and environment and might be something I'm totally not on track with in their question. They may need a more complex node set up to get the result they're after (after removing that encompassing mesh - LOL.)

I've been playing around with this, but finding I'm going to have to do some more research into how the background nodes actually work as they are not reacting the way I expected just hacking at it.

But, yeah, using different texture type nodes produce very different results.
(Someblender (thing) else to look up and tuck away into my limited memory, LOL.)

This was a very informative discussion, Thanks Spanker.

[*P0P$*FR3$H3NM3Y3R*]

For world Textures...use the OBJECT output to go into the mapping node. This should make the texture mapping node behave as intended I think.