P3D Re: Process 2 D negative into 3 D

[Owen Pearn <owenp@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

ZEXIAN SHEN wrote:
> ...
> Our concern is: could we use computer to process a regular 2 D
> negative/transparency into over 7, even up to over 30 negatives which are
> same as the shootings along track?
> 
> If we could, there are many shootings which could be made by the regular
> ways, especially for motion objects. Moreover, there are many famous and
> good historical pictures which could be transfered into 3 D photos. If we
> could, we have already a solid base to beat the 2 D photos in near future.
>
> Is there any specialist in this discipline to answer my question?
> ... 

i have been active recently in this area.

in general, given two or more photographs of the same scene from
different viewpoints, it's possible for software to automatically
generate (without the need for a human operator) any number of
"in-between" images from arbitrary viewpoints. ie., the software can
"take new photographs" of the scene after the fact.

the photographs do not have to have been taken with a stereo camera,
they do not have to be aligned in any special way and there can be any
number of them. any late-model personal computer has the horsepower to
do the in-betweening in under an hour.

so what you can do is create stereo photographs (or a few frames for a
lenticular animation) using only a normal (non-stereo) camera. (if you
use a digital camera, you don't have to wait or pay for film
processing).

if something in the scene moves while you're photographing or filming,
it's a little more tricky, but still doable.

i have not found any single-task tool to do this. i have been thinking
of building such a tool.

there is also the interesting problem of creating stereo photographs (or
lenticular animation frames) from just a single source photograph. it is
straightforward to do this manually, given enough time, some
off-the-shelf modelling and rendering software, and the knowledge of how
to do it.

i have found one single-task tool that purports to do this but i was
unable to get a meaningful result with it (VR-Standard's Stereoscopic
Image Convertor, shareware, beta,
http://www.woobo.com/woobo/english2002/vrjoy/sic09b.zip). i have been
thinking of building a tool that was usable, and that took as much of
the clerical load off the human operator as possible.

if you are doing things lenticular, you may want to check out the LD Pro
Flip software tool from Lenticular Development - given the images you
want to lenticularly print, i think it helps calculate lenticular lens
separation etc. i am not associated with Lenticular Development in any
way:

  http://www.lenticulardevelopment.com/

regards,

-o-


------------------------------