STEREO PANOGRAPHY

How I make 360 degree stereoscopic photos

Thomas K Sharpless Philadelphia, PA [email protected]

WHY SPHERICAL PHOTOGRAPHY?

● Omnidirectional view of a place and time

● Very high resolution possible

● Immersive experience possible

WHAT IS A SPHERICAL PHOTO?

● A 360 x 180 degree image ● Processed and stored in a flat format such as equirectangular or cube map. ● Viewed piecewise on a screen using panorama player software with interactive pan and zoom. ● When viewed in a virtual reality headset, you feel that you are inside the picture.

SPHERICAL IMAGE FORMATS TOP: 360x180 DEGREE EQUIRECTANGULAR MAP BOTTOM:SIX 90x90 DEGREE CUBE FACES

VIEW SPHERICAL PHOTOS ON THE WEB

The bathroom panorama, on 360Cities.net Are You Asleep In There? -- Ed Wilcox

Same room, different artist, on Roundme.com Now And At The Hour Of Our Death -- Ashley Carrega

HOW TO MAKE A SPHERICAL PHOTO

● Use a fish-eye or ultra-wide lens

● Rotate the camera around lens pupil while taking enough photos to cover the sphere

● Use stitching software to combine the photos into a seamless spherical image

A PRO PANORAMIC CAMERA SONY A7r FULL FRAME MIRRORLESS CAMERA SIGMA 15 MM 160 DEGREE FISH-EYE LENS

A COMPACT PANORAMIC CAMERA SONY ALPHA, SAMYANG 8mm/2.8 160 DEG. FISH-EYE

PANORAMIC TRIPOD HEAD NODAL NINJA NN6 WITH MULTI-STOP ROTATOR

PANORAMA BUILDING SOFTWARE

ESSENTIAL

● PTGui pro ($$) or Hugin (free)

● ($$$) or GIMP (free) VERY USEFUL ● ($$)

● Pano2VR pro ($$)

● Image Magick (free) ESSENTIAL FOR 3D

● sView stereo panorama player (free)

● PT3D stereo stitching helper ($)

OMNIDIRECTIONAL STEREO

Combines two 19th century innovations: panoramic photos + stereoscopic photos

Depends on 21st century digital technology

Best viewed on a computer-driven stereopticon, that is, a virtual reality headset

OMNISTEREO THEORY

An omnistereo photo is a stereo pair of slit-scan panoramas. These are not quite spheres, and not quite regular photos; but close enough to present a very good 3D viewing experience.

To learn all about it, read Paul Bourke's papers http://paulbourke.net/stereographics/

STEREO PANORAMA METHODS

I. SINGLE CAMERA, SINGLE SPIN Easy and reliable Needs many photos with large overlap Only for static subjects II. TWIN CAMERAS, STEREO STITCHING Shoot and stitch much like 2D panorama Suitable for action subjects High resolution possible

SINGLE CAMERA, SINGLE SPIN METHOD

● 180 degree fish-eye camera ● Panorama head with 24 or more click stops ● Lens pupil offset forward of axis by IPD ● Take photos all around the horizon, quickly ● Align in stitcher, then stitch twice... – Left eye with mask offset to right – Right eye with mask offset to left ● Retouch and adjust convergence

SINGLE CAMERA STEREO RIG

SINGLE LENS STEREO STITCH 30 PHOTOS 12 DEGREES APART MASKED FOR LEFT EYE

SINGLE LENS STEREO MASKS LEFT AND RIGHT IMAGES TAKEN 60 DEGREES APART MASKS SELECT CORRESPONDING AREAS

PRINCIPLE OF SINGLE LENS METHOD

TWIN CAMERA STEREO STITCHING WITH PTGui AND PT3D

● Matched cameras, aligned and synchronized ● Shoot RAW in normal panorama pattern ● Process RAW images for color match ● Align all photos in PTGui ● Generate stitch project with PT3D ● Warp-to-fit and stitch in PTGui ● Retouch, adjust color and convergence

SINGLE-ROW TWIN CAMERA RIG SONY NEX-5n, SAMYANG 7.5MM/3.5 NODAL NINJA e-MOUNT CONVERSION

SINGLE ROW STEREO STITCH LEFT EYE PHOTOS 0-7 (lower) RIGHT EYE PHOTOS 8-15 (upper)

MULTI-ROW TWIN CAMERA RIG SONY NEX-5n, SONY 16MM/2.8 NODAL NINJA NN3, HOMEBREW STEREO BAR

MULTI-ROW STEREO STITCH 4 ROWS OF 8 STEREO PAIRS THIS IS THE 32 RIGHT EYE IMAGES

WAYS TO VIEW STEREO PANORAMAS

● Computer => 3D monitor or TV ● tethered VR headset (Rift, Vive, Odyssey) ● Stand-alone VR headset (Gear VR, Go) ● Smart phone + phone stereoscope

ENABLING TECHNOLOGIES

HTML5, WebGL : high performance graphics in web browsers. Embedded panorama players (krpano, others) : spherical images in any web page. WebVR : virtual reality display in browsers. Virtual reality headset (GearVR,Go, Rift, Vive) : immersive stereo viewing with multiple apps, including webVR enabled browsers.

PUBLISHING STEREO PANORAMAS

● 360Cities.net, Roundme.com, others Easy upload and edit Support phone stereoscopes and webVR ● Gala360app.com VR headset app serving virtual tours + website supporting phone stereoscopes and webVR Subscription model ● Own website with krpano, pano2VR, etc. Full control, lots of work