I had an idea of making a physical lens using a glass-type surface and using refraction, it’s kind of cool because it makes curved lines, not like just changing the camera setting where the lines still stay straight.
Searching the forums just now a couple of people have tried this before, but I still think it’s pretty funky.
Using Blender 2.42a internal renderer, I made the lens quite concave and stuck it in front of the camera.
Another funky way to get a fisheye view is to use Blend2POV(http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?t=56552&highlight=povray), modify the camera in the resulting POVray file to a fisheye, and render in POVray.
wow, really nice results Merlot, would you mind showing a screenshot of the top view so I can see how it all works?
Yeah sure, here’s a top view screenshot and on the right you can see a view of the lens by itself. I built a shade thing around the camera and lens to prevent light coming in the back of the lens and messing with the shot, that’s the flower-pot looking thing that you can see around the camera in the top view.
Nice! I’ve thought of this, but I never actually tried it.
