P3D Re: Converting 2D into Simulated 3D

[Peter Davis <pd@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I'm not understanding what you're talking about.  You mention "retaking 
pictures with a camera from two differing angles."  Do you mean shooting 
the same subject twice, but moving the camera in between?  This is a very 
common technique for getting stereo images, and yes, it does work, as long 
as the subject doesn't move between pictures.

Or are you talking about some technique for taking a single photo from a 
single vantage point and, using a computer and some image processing 
software, generating a second image?  If that's the case, it's been done, 
but I think it's unreliable and very labor intensive.  It generally 
involves cutting portions of the image and shifting them slightly to the 
right or left to create the parallax.

It might be possible to do this automatically at some point with a grab-bag 
of techniques from artificial intelligence, image processing, etc.  A 
computer which "recognizes" people and objects in a photo might be able to 
reconstruct a model of those objects from its own database, and then create 
a second image of that model from a slightly different view point.  I don't 
think there's anything marketable yet that can do this.

-pd


At 03:31 AM 1/21/00 , you wrote:
>Somewhere I heard of someone taking standard photos and retaking pictures
>with a camera from two differing angles and being able to simulate a 3D
>illusion. Has anyone else heard of this or have reproduced this with good
>results?  I don't see how it could be manually done with cameras, but
>perhaps there is some software that can "morph" one 2d image's elements to
>create a visual effect of appearing to be looking at the subjects in the
>image from differing perspectives-one from the left and one from the right?
>That could conceivably be then used to create a stereo analygraph from the
>"morphed" images. If the software is not yet known to exist, someone should
>develop one.

--------
                              Peter Davis
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