Orientation and Distort



X, Y and Z Rotation
Rotates the gradient or image map relative to the camera in the scene. Rotating in X will move the gradient or image up and down relative to the camera view. Rotating in Y will move the sphere around the camera; left to right for positive values, or right to left for negative values. Rotating in Z will tilt horizon line clockwise or counter-clockwise relative to the camera. In most cases, you should leave these values at their defaults and use the camera to animate the position relative to the background. If you need to move the position of a map, or you want create motion blur in front of the camera, then you might animate or change these values.

Straighten
Makes all lines straight in the Gradient/Lines mode when the value is set to 100. This control is most useful with image maps that are not in the spherical coordinates format (i.e., regular photos) so that you can undistort the projection of the image onto the sphere.

Scatter
Introduces a subtle scatter to both Gradient modes and image maps. Increasing this value to between 10 and 50 can be useful for in reducing banding artifacts in the subtle gradients created by the plug-in. This type of banding effect is usually only noticeable with subsampled codecs like DV or HDV compression.