P3D Boris on 3D-CD

[boris@xxxxxxxxxxxx (Boris Starosta)]

Well, time for me to chime in!  Dan will corroborate that I was a bit of a
skeptic of his project at first - but eventually came around to supporting
it.  I must say - even with the rave reviews coming in from others in
recent days - you have to see it to believe it!  A truly fabulous product.
High quality AND quantity.  It has already allowed me to fully explore
sites that I found months ago, but never had the time to look at online
(poor transfer rates from Taiwan, for example).  This CD is going to be a
great resource for many months, even years... (certainly that's how long it
will take me to get through it all!)...  beyond that, of course, it will be
collectible!

Dan deserves as many orders as he can get for this excellent work, and I
hope that this and other reviews still to come, will help doubters to
decide to get their own 3D-CD.

Naturally, I immediately looked for the adult section.  Just to see what
Dan had come up with!  I was very pleased to see the Taipei stereo gallery!
Here's a site I found some months back, but had never had the patience to
explore fully.  Coming out of Taiwan, the transfer rates were dreadful!  On
the CD it's fast and fun.

One page in the adult section merits your close attention (other than my
3dshowcase, of course): the page listed as "a few varied stereo pairs" (
file:///3DCD1/ADULT/adult1/index.htm  ).  Careful analysis reveals all of
these to be very well done conversions from regular monoscopic "flat"
photographs.

I'm not saying that makes them invalid for this CD.  Not at all - just
drawing attention to their artificiality, because it is quite amazing to me
how _real_ a good conversion can look.  They are still a form of
stereo"graphy" - just not true stereo photography.

What makes me think they are conversions?

You'll not notice problems at first... but after some inspection you may
see strange things happening behind edges in the scene.  When doing a
conversion, it is the edges that are most difficult: the artist has to
"fabricate" image "behind" some edges, and this is where you will find
cloning, odd texture changes, etc.  This is especially difficult when the
edge is of a poorly defined object, such as hair.  Sometimes the artist
will not bother with some edges, or small "holes" in a foreground object,
making the immediate background behind those appear at the same image level
as the foreground object.

Another tip-off is in reflections, which the conversion artist may forget
to treat as a three dimensional image in its own right.  One of the images
has a model on a table.  The table reflects a little, but you can see that
the reflected image is flat - right on the surface of the table - instead
of below the surface, where it should be.

Finally, and this is a more subjective characteristic to judge, the space
in its entirety may not look right...  The depth may not look commensurate
to field of view, or a very large linear object (like the edge of a ceiling
or floor) may not look continuous, passing behind a foreground object.  The
examples on the CD do not have this problem, but another image on the site
where some of these came from had a model that simply looked distorted.
Her legs looked like they were zigzagging in the depth dimension, when they
should have been straight.

I'm going to go back to the fun, now!

Thanks again, Dan.  Super work!




Boris Starosta

usa 804 979 3930

boris@xxxxxxxxxxxx
http://www.starosta.com
http://www.starosta.com/3dshowcase



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