A few years ago I spent some time with a friend of mine who did a lot of high end 360 degree HDR spheres and backplates for the gaming industry and his animation business. He introduced me to a few basics of the process.
Firstly, the tripod head really isn't that important other than it be solid enough with the tripod legs (a heavy wight hanging from the centre post does wonders). The Pano Bracket is the useful part. While these range from expensive to inexpensive - automated to basic manual - - - the most important part according to him, was making sure that the nodal point of the lens was accurately positioned over the rotation point of the bracket. This nodal point needs to be calculated for each lens - and if using a zoom lens, each focal length you will use.
The software that he was dedicated to and so used, was called Maya I believe. For his animations, he used it in conjunction with Adobe After Effects. One point that he mentioned to me was that it is much more difficult to get accurate stitching with very wide angle lenses. At the time I had a wonderful Sigma 10-20 lens with my Nikon D200 that I thought would be perfect for getting the captures done quickly. He soon showed me how that wasn't the case. So apparently it takes away a lot of extra work and frustration if a more normal focal length lens is used to create 360 panos (he was shooting each position of the pano with 9 HDR frames so had a lot of alignment concerns to worry about).
I can't remember what the brand of the inexpensive manual bracket that he used was - - - but with a quick Google search this morning, I did find this handmade unit and instructions that probably wasn't too much different - expect for some markings (which can easily be added with a magic marker I'd think)
http://www.peterloud.co.uk/nodalsamurai/nodalsamurai.html
It is a big learning curve, but very rewarding with good results. All the best.
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