kMaps - 32bit HDR 360 Sky Creator PS Plug-In

Adobe Photoshop Plug-In

kMaps - HDR 32bit Procedural 360° Sky Maps
Latitude/Longitude Cylindrical Mapping

IMPORTANT:
This plugin is free and open, it was created and tested with Photoshop 2020(21.2.1) (with CEP 9) English Version with Windows 10, I dont know if it works in other versions.

UPDATE: I tested in the newest Photoshop today and works! (24.3.0 with CEP11) still needs to be English Version... but i also just learned today that CEP is deprecated, probably by the time that is removed, this plugin wont be that useful, in front of AI image synthesis advances... (i dont know of any AI that can render 16K 32bit?)

It is simple/perlin/fractal noise, old-school styled clouds.

The plugin is not signed by Adobe and you have to manually install it and change Photoshop settings to run in debug mode (see video for install guide).

The program has some bugs, mostly in the UI...

INFO:

The images dont have ground, so you dont have to worry of deleting it or hiding it.
That means that every image works as two.

To generate 16K images depends on GPU and/or drivers. 8K works all the time (4K is usually ok!)

The 32bit part of this, is slow. The psd document that generates is 16bit and arranged to as a last step, take photos of the image with different "exposures" and then it stacks them in a new 32bit document.

All presets packed will work and look good with the default options of the initial clouds, if you change them (Adavanced Noise Options), then you will have to adjust other settings later.
This means that you configure some pre-clouds, and start applying presets and none of them look right.
So, i recomend you to first only change the Seed or/and Noise Evolution, generate a file, play with the presets and see how everything works.

While most of these type of textures (equirectangular/spherical panorama) are 2:1 aspect, this plugin makes them 1:1. The reason is mainly, because engines like Unity, resize and pack them in this aspect, so instead of faking the rest of the pixels, better to have them initally.

INSTALLATION WINDOWS 10:

Place the folder inside the rar (/com.k.maps) here: C:/Users/***/AppData/Roaming/Adobe/CEP/extensions/
And then install the Actions normally (also in the zip file).

Enable Debug Mode in Photoshop, (see the video)!

SIMPLE GUIDE:

(Close all other files.)

1 - Click "Render .PSD".
2 - Select a preset, click "Run".
3 - Click "Convert to HDR" (or not!)
4 - Save As...

Tips:
- Dont judge only by the preview. Use it as a style guide.

- Sometimes photoshop shows some banding zooming out, dont worry, gradients are ok.

- Not all presets use all the clouds layers, if you dont want to use an option or layer, set its opacity to 0, dont make it invisible, preset saving will fail if there are hidden layers.

- The sun and moon, depending where they are, can deform.

- The animation part is very rudimentary -i just added it- worked for these examples. But it usually crashes, or you have to kill Photoshop because you lose control over it.

Color code for the photoshop file:
RED items, means do not change!, these are intented to be controlled through the plugin.

BLUE and GREEN are the only editable.

[Guide in process]

Download links at the bottom of the page.