| Author | Message | ||
     didier Rating: N/A |
Hi, I'm created 3d and 2d animation and some of my clients could be interested, for exibition mostly, to be able to turn my 3d animation mixed sometimes with live action in a stereoscopic format. I mean show it on a lcd or plasma. 1- Is there a standard to turn my animation in stereoscopic format with no glasses? 2- What monitor should I use? 3- Are my client will be able to rent them for a week or 2 or the east and west coast? 4- Is there a good stereoscopic laptop (no glasses) to buy to show my 3d demo to my clients? Any help will be very appreciate. Didier Levy (I live in Los Angeles). didier@frogstudio.net www.frogstudio.net | ||
| Puppet Kite Kid Rating: N/A |
You can either: 1) Render it in a paired format and use a stereoscopic player to convert it on-the-fly to the format your monitor requires. 2) Pre-convert it to the format that the monitor requires. 3) Use the software that the monitor manufacturer supplies. There are a number of autostereoscopic displays these days (Google?). I assume many if not most of them can use pre-rendered vertically interlaced material. I'm still confused about what the Sharp autostereoscopic notebook requires... I know how to render basic "vertically interlaced" material at any resolution, and I assume that works for many of the available displays, but I don't understand why the Sharp notebook reportedly uses something "other than" standard vertical interlacing... and also, I have heard that the results, or at least *some* of the results of the supplied software isn't working properly either. That complicates this a bit :-) Other than that, I know what I would do... I'd find one that uses standard vertically interlaced material, because that's relatively easy to encode, and you can even do that with freeware :-) Maybe someone can clue us in on the Sharp situation :-) If you decide to punt, and need a killer, professional anaglyph that will blow the socks off a bull-fighter, let me know ;-) That's what I've been giving my clients for use with "regular old digital gear" ;-) -- P. K. Kid Stereoscopic 3D images and movie clips (all G-rated): http://www.puppetkites.net | ||
| Puppet Kite Kid Rating: N/A |
Also, Didier, I looked at your web site, and am thrilled to see a professional of your caliber that's interested in stereoscopic rendering! Maybe this is a sign of the times? ;-) Seriously... figuring out how to show it is the easy part. Rendering the second camera is the extremely difficult part :-) My first hour is "free"... just kidding!!! I'd be glad to help in any way to get you started in the right direction, if you are new to stereoscopic rendering. I don't know... maybe you know what you are doing already? If you are willing to share tips "publicly" (non-commercially, such as in this forum), so everyone can share the knowledge, I'll gladly share all I know. I think education is the key to a good, successful future of stereoscopy :-) Sharing example images is really the only way to do it. Some people are not happy with doing that publicly, but that's the only way for all of us to learn and advance. Hey, I don't mean to sound like I know it all... I learn new things almost daily, and that's the best thing about stereoscopy. You can't "know it all", although I get accused on many occasions for acting like a "know it all" ;-) PKK | ||
| M.H. Rating: N/A |
didier: For what you need I see only one solution - 9 view autostereoscopic monitor - preferably Stereographics SynthaGram. The SG 204 is a good compromise betwen resolution and price ... Sterographic has a set of plugin for 3D Studio Max and Maya helping to preare the neccesary stereo mluti-vew on the scene (syntha Gram Contnt Creation kit). Our company had developed software (DepthQ Server) witch can play the stereoscopic movie on diferent sort of HW. So you can show the movie to your client by Sharp Actius autostereoscopic notebook as well. You can discuse the problematic directly by me, or with LightpseedDesign people for witch I partialy work (http://www.lightspeeddesign.com) | ||
| M.H. Rating: N/A |
didier: Lightpseed has avaialbe the SG 204 - you should discuse with them a renting service. | ||
| eric Rating: N/A |
Bonjour, 1- Is there a standard to turn my animation in stereoscopic format with no glasses? Pas de standard, c'est la jungle ! Ici, nous avons développé des passerelles pour 3d max, Maya et XSI, pour l'instant. 2- What monitor should I use? Cela dépend pour quoi faire. Pour montrer des images au grand public sans contraintes de positionnement, comme dans un salon ou une expo, il n'y a guere que les systemes d'Opticality ou l'Alioscopy, ce dernier ayant la meilleure qualité d'image. 3- Are my client will be able to rent them for a week or 2 or the east and west coast? Cela demande verification mais il me semble qu'on doit pouvoir louer un écran alioscopy LCD 40 pouces sur LA. Par ailleurs, ca voyage pas trop mal en flycase. 4- Is there a good stereoscopic laptop (no glasses) to buy to show my 3d demo to my clients? Il y a bien des portables mais bon serait trop demander. Les sharp sont visibles quelques instants, apres, c'est le mal de crane. | ||
| Anonymous Rating: N/A |
eric: Please, it is a standard to use English on this board. | ||
| eric Rating: N/A |
to summarize, I said : - There are no standard. - The best multiviewer autostereoscopic systems are the Opticality and Alioscopy ones, the later being the better. - For information about Alioscopy,contact: Digital Picture Group 3D 6080 Center Drive, 5th Flr Los Angeles, CA 90045 310-846-5338 bent@dpg3d.com www.digitalpicturegroup.com - Sharp laptops gives you a headache. | ||
| M.H. Rating: N/A |
eric: Your answers are not 100% correct ... - a very good standard is the 9 view format used by Stereographics. The nine view are organized in a 3x3 matrix. Leftmost in the left-top part, right on the bottom right part. Details ar on this link: http://www.stereographics.com/products/synthagram/The_SynthaGram_Handbook_v9.pdf - I had seen almast all exsiting autostereoscopic displays. The diferences betwen Stereographics and Opticality (X3D) are neglible. I had never seen Alioscopy model on any exhibition. - 2 view only systems like Sharp require positiong of the user in one special place to see good image, yes this is a problem, but due to 2 images only based view the resolution is higher than for most other autostereoscopic monitors ... | ||
| Puppet Kite Kid Rating: N/A |
I have looked at a few stereo plugins, but they always seem to be missing many of the options that I prefer (but obviously I have not seen them all ;-) There is a fairly easy and _totally_ controllable way to set up any number of parallel cameras in _any_ 3D CGI program that supports multiple camera views, and have total control over all the stereoscopic elements. This way, you are not limited to one or two programs... it will work equally as well in all of them :-) I can provide screen shots to easily demonstrate how to do this (and I think I already have in another thread, somewhere ;-)... You set it up just like you do with a real multiple camera rig. The beauty of CGI is you can easily globally animate the stereo base(s) (as demonstrated with two camera views in Polar Express). Create a "null object", and I just create a "handle", which is just a tube that works just like a stereoscopic slide bar or mounting bar. Next, create your parallel cameras, pointed exactly parallel to infinity (to avoid keystone distortion), and make them all "children" of the mounting bar. All you have to do to change the stereo base globally to all cameras is resize the mounting bar! That stereo base can then be globally animated by using keyframes. Change the focal lengths equally for all cameras to change the amount of zoom. All other camera settings can be adjusted equally... Render this "fat" in the width from each camera view, and then adjust the horizontal parallax in post, and I even animate that, and I even animate the stereo window, now too, to avoid window violations... and I de-ghost, etc, but this tells you the basics... I use Adobe After Effects for all the post work, which is the "King of Kings" of the professional stereoscopic compositing tools. Dream it stereoscopically and AE can do it. I render everything in parallel, full rez format... you can place all your cameras side-by-side in one composition, or use any stereoscopic configuration you want. If you want to convert to vertical interlaced format for two perspective displays, there are a number of ways to do that. You can even use freeware, like VirtualDub. If you need to do tiling of multiple views or use an existing monitor's suggested software, you'll have to figure out how to go from post editing to that particular format, but that should be fairly easy to do. The recommended software will have a "required input" format or formats, and you can set that up in AE, no matter what is required. -- P. K. Kid Stereoscopic 3D images and movie clips (all G-rated): http://www.puppetkites.net | ||
| M.H. Rating: N/A |
PPK: The Stereographic plugins for 3D max and Maya can do all, you speak about + much more. Much more = immediate stero preview by OpenGl page flipping or anaglyph, automatic control of respecting stereoscopic rules during the whole animation, otpimalization for given target screen size, automatic combination of the multiple view to one output .... After one year of work with them, I had find only one problem. They do not support the Metal Ray 3D max renderer (they work only with standard rednerer), but this is another story .... | ||
| Puppet Kite Kid Rating: N/A |
I'm sorry... I didn't explain myself correctly, but that is because it is extremely difficult for me to explain ;-) To put it simply, the entire Adobe After Effects software program _is_ my "stereoscopic plugin". In other words, my "stereoscopic plugin" is a complete stereoscopic compositor. I am not talking about stereoscopic format converting or things like OpenGL rendering... those are completely separate tasks from what I am talking about. Also, I am not talking about vertical multiple-view tiling or even simple dual-perspective vertical interlacing. Again, those are separate tasks from what I am talking about. Those might be equally as complex tasks as what can be composited with After Effects, but those are not compositing tasks, those are purely stereoscopic rendering tasks. Also, I am not talking about common 3D CGI tasks. Those are also separate tasks from what I am talking about. Equally as complex, perhaps, but different. Again, I am talking about things that that be applied "after that" ("After Effects"). Stereoscopic compositing with After Effects is _not_ the equivalent of "stereoscopic post-production" in the analog world. It is a completely unique process in the stereoscopic workflow. In order for me to be happy with a "stereoscopic plugin", that stereoscopic plugin would have to be capable of doing _everything_ that Adobe After Effects can do, stereoscopically. To list those things would take a complete tutorial about stereoscopic compositing. Usually, when I start telling people the details of what all can be done stereoscopically with After Effects, people start asking me "why" I even would want to do many of those things, which is why I hoped that the original poster would be interested in sharing example images, instead of starting an endless debate about "why" we might do certain things. If for no other reason, some of the things that can be done are purely for artistic reasons, but many have very practical purposes, e.g., de-ghosting by animating the horizontal parallax with keyframes, for one tiny example of many. Again, it is useless to start listing all the things that can be done. Much of the terminology is very difficult to explain, usually because no one can agree on the "proper" terminology for much of it. Existing stereoscopic FAQ's even sometimes seem to further complicate matters. Really... demonstrating with graphic examples is the only easy way to demonstrate most of this stuff, even though understanding what is happening at an intellectual level is not always easy... or maybe even possible, in many cases ;-) -- P. K. Kid Stereoscopic 3D images and movie clips (all G-rated): http://www.puppetkites.net | ||
| Puppet Kite Kid Rating: N/A |
I just ran across the lenticular i-Magic Camera Plugin (for 3DS Max): http://www.iart3d.com/ENG/Products/Lenticular/LS_IMCamera_Eng.htm There is a user's manual (PDF) near the bottom, and like other stereoscopic plugins I have seen, it uses toe-in convergence to adjust the horizontal parallax, and this is the root of the one of the biggest debates in stereoscopy. I do not want to dig up this old debate for the 1,000th time, but let me just say that I personally aim my cameras parallel to infinity with no toe-in whatsoever, then I adjust or animate the horizontal parallax in post (editing) with Adobe After Effects. This is nothing new in stereoscopy. Still image stereo shooters have been doing this for a long time, mainly to avoid keystone distortion. I do it with stereoscopic motion graphics (movies and animations), not only to avoid keystone distortion, but for many other reasons... it give me full control over the horizontal parallax during editing, and importing graphics into my stereoscopic composition that all initially have both an infinity window setting and the point of zero parallax placed at infinity (which is what you always get with cameras pointed parallel to infinity) has virtually been the basic "building blocks" for my particular method of stereoscopic compositing. To me, it is the equivalent of perfectly leveling the ground and foundation before you start building a house. If the ground and foundation is not level, it is impossible to build a perfectly "squared" house. And not only do I adjust and animate the horizontal parallax during post-compositing, I recently started independently adjusting the stereo window, which is not the same thing as "zero parallax"... it is strictly and only defined by the "edges of the stereoscopic image". The stereo window can also be adjusted and animated in z-space, independent of the horizontal parallax and the point of zero parallax. Setting up more than two cameras interests me enough to at least try it, and using a 3D 3GI program is the obvious place to try it first. I suppose it will be a good excuse for me to study the effects and the degree of keystone distortion from toe-in, once and for all. I have been wanting to do that for years :-) Hold on... here we go... weeeeeeeeee! -- P. K. Kid Stereoscopic 3D images and movie clips (all G-rated): http://www.puppetkites.net | ||
| Puppet Kite Kid Rating: N/A |
Okay, I also just read through the Stereographics SynthaGram Handbook PDF, http://www.stereographics.com/products/synthagram/The_SynthaGram_Handbook_v9.pdf and it seems to use a parallel-to-infinity camera setup, unless I read it incorrectly, but the only possible parallax adjustments during compositing are global adjustments. At least we don't have to worry about keystone distortion with this method :-) Anyway, that seems to be an improvement over the i-Magic Camera Plugin, and I am glad to see a stereoscopic plugin that does not use toe-in convergence :-) Maybe I don't need to do those headache-inducing keystone distortion tests after all ;-) I'll give it a shot with my own multi-camera setup and see what I come up with. I'm a complete newbie with lenticular content, and I don't even have an autostereoscopic viewing device to test this with... but I can create a "virtual one" and demonstrate what it *would* look like via a standard stereoscopic animation (i.e., a "virtual, virtual, multi-view autostereoscopic animation ;-) ;-). I will incorporate all my compositing techniques of parallax animation, stereo window animation, compositional and "spot" de-ghosting, etc, and if someone out there can actually tile what I do, they could even test it on a real autostereoscopic display :-) I am not a professional 3D CGI modeler or animator, so it's going to be very basic, but at least you can experience all the animated parallaxes and windows and all my wild and wacky craziness... :-) PKK | ||
| Puppet Kite Kid Rating: N/A |
Let me add a couple more things before I start doing this. I don't see any reference to stereo base animation in either of the PDF doc's, either, but you can do that "outside" the plugins, if you have to (again, by creating a virtual slide bar or mounting bar, "parenting" it to the cameras, and then adjusting or animating the stereo base(s) by simply resizing the slide bar). I animate the stereo base of the cameras themselves, obviously, and then I animate the horizontal parallax and recently I animate the stereo window after the images from the cameras are recorded or rendered. So, that is a two step process (the horizontal parallax and the stereo window can be animated at the same time). Obviously, people using real cameras won't able to animate the stereo base, unless they have some sort of an elaborate interaxial mechanism that can do that... that obviously gets very complex, so concentrating just on controlling the "maximum amount of depth" is usually more of a practical concern for real cameras, rather than trying to actually animate the stereo base. Still image compositions that are not animated obviously do not have animated interaxial adjustments, horizontal parallax or stereo windows, but the individual frames can have individual settings. Setting up nine cameras in Blender freeware was very easy to do for me. If anyone else wants to do this with freeware, there's a great way to study the camera rendering and the model animation rendering with no expense, and you can have the stereo base animation (or settings) intact. People who prefer professional 3D CGI programs should be able to apply the same principles. I will look and see if there is a Python script for rendering all nine camera views, to automate that part of the procedure in Blender. If not, I can explain how to do that, but each camera will have to be rendered separately. Hopefully, there is a script available, or one could be written, I'm sure. I will post screenshots when I get done. The compositing is another story :-) I will use Adobe After Effects, so I'm not sure what to tell people to use to animate the horizontal parallax and stereo window, if they don't have After Effects... Still images could be composited in this way with Photoshop, so I can also explain how to do that, if needed. You just need to create one additional "mask", and that's easy to do. Anyway, I just wanted to clarify a few more things... most of this probably sounds like craziness, but once you see it, it a should all come together, perfectly ;-) I'm not sure when I can get an example together... it seems to be going fairly smoothly, but I'll probably hit a snag, somewhere :-) I will report the results and show the demo when I get done :-) PKK |
