Creating a One-Face Sphere Environment 

This task shows you how to create a sphere environment with one face. One-face sphere environments allow you have an image mapped continuously and thus, avoid the need to make manual adjustments for each wall as you would do with a standard spherical shape.
No sample is required to follow this scenario.
  1. Click Create Sphere Environment to create an environment being a non-dimensional sphere with two hemispheres: Top and Bottom.

  2. Zoom out then click anywhere in the geometry area to deselect the environment.

  3. Right-click the environment in the specification tree then select Properties. The Properties dialog box is displayed.

  4. Click the Dimensions tab which enables you to define the environment size as well as the geometry type:

  5. In the geometry area, select 1 Face then click OK (or Apply then OK) to validate.

    As the environment is changed into a one-face environment, the Top wall is extended to the whole sphere and the bottom wall disappears as indicated by the specification tree:
  6. Select Top wall in the specification tree.

  7. Apply a texture, for instance, by clicking Apply Material then selecting a texture from the material catalog.

    Note that you can map either a default or a custom texture image. For detailed information on how to map images onto an environment wall, refer to Defining the Wallpaper.

  8. Click OK to validate.

    The texture image you selected is mapped continuously onto the whole environment as shown below:
    Courtesy of the City of Nice (France) - Picture by Denis Picard
    As for a standard environment, you can resize the one-face environment and modify its position and dimensions.
  9. Whenever you wish to switch from one to two faces, re-access the environment properties (by right-clicking the environment in the specification tree then selecting Properties) and select 2 Faces.

    In that case, the Bottom wall appears as it was before switching to 1 Face. In our example, no texture image has been applied to Bottom wall before and thus, the environment looks like this:

    Courtesy of the City of Nice (France) - Picture by Denis Picard
Note that when the On Environment option is activated, shadows are cast on the environment as well.