Stereovision aka a poor man's VR (has anyone else tried this?)
Aabacus
Posts: 407
Set up your scene with a camera. Duplicate the camera and select Copy Active View. Set up your viewport with a left and right frame. Make one frame one camera and the other frame the other camera EXCEPT move that other camera SLIGHTLY left or right.
The tricky part is to cross your eyes just right to make the two images become one in the middle. (Simulating this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereoscope)
It works!
Will need to do some experimentation...
If you put your cameras in a group you can move them (a little) in tandem.
You can also rotate models etc.
I have no idea if this has any value to anyone but it was a fun discovery.
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Aabacus - It may not interest you but we have a product for Bryce to directly render 3D images: for parallel viewing, cross-eye viewing and for anaglyphs (needs red/cyan goggles) https://www.daz3d.com/bryce-7-pro-true-3d-rendering. Of course, you can always do it with two renders, one for the left and one for the right eye. In this case, to get the the toe-in angle right is a bit fiddly.
Thank you!!!
You wrote two sentences and taught me 4 new terms. LOL. Parallel viewing, cross eye viewing, anaglyphs and toe-in. I was lucky to dig in my brain and pull out stereograph.
I wish I could use Bryce and Carerra but I have a Mac on the latest OS. Both of those would be an instabuy if they worked on current Mac OS's.
And boy are you right. That toe in angle is fiddly. It's a fun diversion for a minute though. It makes me want to get a VR set up. Sheesh.
There is a freebie camera set for this. Not sure if it works in Iray.
https://www.sharecg.com/v/77718/gallery/21/DAZ-Studio/Stereo-Camera
SlimerJSpud - probably not, but if it works in 3DL that may be good enough. It does anaglyphs. The example is a bad example: objects that come out of the screen towards the viewer must not touch the image frame - like a chair does - because that irritates. Otherwise it looks good.
The anaglyph is a post process. You still render two images, so it should be possible to combine them in other ways.
I see. Yes, like I do them with photos. Where the red and cyan converge is usually the screen plane.
I tried the freebie stereo camera I linked above. It does work in Iray. It's just two normal cameras paired together with controls for distance and parallax. Parallax is indeed the fiddly bit. It looks like trial and error will give the desired effect. It only remains how to view them as 3D. The anaglyph method has the drawback of washing out some of the color. It was designed for B&W images, like in The Creature From the Black Lagoon. The stereogram method nicely separates L & R, but requires more hardware. Crossing your eyes starts to hurt after a while, lol. Using a VR headset to view static images is a bit of overkill. Animations would be cool in VR, but that depends on the software used to integrate the renders.
Here's one more that you need to understand 3-D and do it properly - Inter-ocular, which is a fancy way of saying that the distance between the "lenses" of the two cameras have to placed in a way that mimics the distance between the eyes of the average person, and that the field taken in by those lenses has to duplicate has to be close to that of the average human eye. If that doesn't happen, then the convergence of the 3D image is something that our minds will, at best, cause eyestrain and headaches, and, at worst, will cause the viewer's mind to immediately perceive as being wrong and reject. Needless to say, that's a problem in the real world if your cameras are too big to place side by side and have the lenses be the right distance apart, which is why if you look at pictures of a lot of professional 3D camera setups hat used twin camera, the cameras were set up and 90 degree angles to each other around a two way mirror, with one filming the image reflected in the mirror and the other filming directly through it. (Ironically, the director of one of the films that's considered to have the best 3-D from the pre-digital era, HOUSE OF WAX, Andre De Toth, was blind in one eye, so he had to work out his set-ups mathetically rather than just "eyeballing" it like most directors of the period did.) In any case, where this becomes important for rendering is that the apparent "focal length" of the human eye actually varies depending on where your subject is standing relative to the camera, but 22mm (in 35mm camera equivalence) is a good starting place. What's really imprtant to remember, though, is that while human eyes can turn inward to focus on closer objects, they can't turn outward, so it's critical to make sure that your two taking "camereas" are always either parallel or turning slightly towards each other.
The other basic rule is that, unlike the real world, the 3D image has solid borders on each side where the image cuts off, mimicing the effect of a proscenium arch in a theater. Nothing destroys the 3-D illusion faster than to have part of any object that's supposed to be extending towards the viewer's POV be cut off by the sides of the camera frame... however, there is a really amazing cheat that animated 3D films frequently use to enhance their 3D effect, which is to actually render a false procenium as part of the image and have parts of the image that would normally be cut off actually stick partially outside the fake frame. Sounds crazy, but it really works quite well, and in a theater it gives the impression that the theater screen is actually a few feet further back than it actually is.
I did a few of these a couple years back after getting one of those cheap VR headsets for my smart phone. I kind of just estimated the camera locations after doing a bit of research online. I think it turned out pretty good... although I'm not very good at the "cross eye" focusing method.
I've gotten pretty good at the cross-eyed thing, and the foreground here is pretty good. The photo background kind of throws things, though, as I can get the forground to converge okay, but the background trees are on the same plane as the mountains and it makes my brain go wonky.
Yeah, the background is just the HDRI image. I was more or less just trying to see if I could get it to work in general. Only played with it for a day or two and then moved on to other things! :)
Hi,
thank you SlimerJSpud for mentioning my Freebee Stereo-Camera.
And yes, it works for iRay, too. You only have to remove the (auxiliary) light I added for better 3DL (to be used for UE2) outcome.
Andy
Defintely something to fiddle with at some point! I tried it, but didn't get anything worth posting. Yes, I turned off the headlamp. @Cybersox, the set does have the Inter-ocular distance parameter. It's initial setting is 10cm, which is around 4 inches. My eyes are a little closer than that. Somewhere between 3 and 4 inches is in the ballpark. This set is fairly easy to use, as there are only 2 parameters to adjust the geometry. Other camera settings, like DOF would have to be manually duplicated.
Here's another one I did a while ago that I was able to dig up. Again, I kind of just guessed on the camera locations after a bit of testing.
10CM is really a good bit too far apart. Keep in mind that we're talking about duplicating the effective distance from the center of one lens to the other, so the equivalent is pupil to pupil.. that's why the eye technician or optometrist will put those black dots in the center of your eyes, to keep the centerpoint of your glasses lenses from being off axis. The average adult’s interpupilary distance ranges between 54 and 74 mm; with kids ranging between 43-58 mm, with 6cm being the agreed-upon interocular used for both most twin camera 3d setups in the real world and between the dual objectives of single lenses 3D systems. If you want to get seriously into 3D theory, there was an author named Ray Zone (believe it or not, his real name,) who published a number of excellent books on the subject of stereoscopy in both film and printed art.
Perhaps that explains the eye strain, LoL!