Unofficial step by step tutorial for stereo panos

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Montag, 23. Januar 2017, 18:14

First of all: I’m just a beginner, and only few days ago I wasn’t unable to create a stereo pano. But after some testings and investigation, I finally succeeded.

This is a compilation of the information that I found, together with my own tricks. I think this explanation could be better (and my English level is not 100%) so that, any help would be appreciated to improve this tutorial.

I have also to notice that I contacted Klaus, and he told me that the next version of krpano will do the stereo panos and tours automatically (no need to edit the xml file), so that these instructions will be obsolete with this new version. But in the meantime, you can perfectly do the stereo panos with the actual version and this tutorial.

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1. 3DS MAX + VRAY

Place a regular camera, not a V-Ray physical camera, at the center of the room.

Standard height for a camera inside a room is 157cm (average people’s eyes height. You can of course choose a different height).

Lens/FOV settings should not matter because it is a “proper pano,” which grabs all six angles appropriately to stitch together later on.

Open Render Setup. Set Output Size Width and Height at: 9216x1536.

Set Image Aspect ratio should be 6.0.

Make sure you have V-Ray assigned as your renderer.

Create a Stereoscopic Helper and drop one in the scene (the position is irrelevant). This allows you to automatically adjust the horizontal resolution of the render to account for left and right eye renders.

Set Eye Distance to 0.065m (6.5cm, average people’s eyes separation)

Set Focus Method to None

Leave the Interocular Method at Shift Both

Panoramic Pole Merging sets where the stereo effect dissipates so that looking at the poles gives a proper image. Max defaults to 60 degrees at the top and 60 degrees at the bottom. Keep these set at 60.0.

Click on Adjust Resolution (the render will automatically be adjusted at 18432x1536 pixels)

Set Camera Type in the Renderer Setup to Cube 6x1

Turn off Image Filter to avoid seams between your cube maps.

Once all is set up properly, you should have a render of 12 squares at 1536 res, side by side, for a total of 18432x1536. The left six will belong to the left eye and the right six belong to the right eye.

Note: The first version of VRay that supports stereo cubemaps is 3.20, although this version has a little bug, and you will see the last row of pixels in the border of each cubemap with a slight color distortion that comes from the adjacent cubemap. This is little noticeable in the pano, but it’s a failure. It seems that VRay 3.40 solves this bug.

Links:

These instructions extracted from this article and others similar:
https://help.irisvr.com/hc/en-us/article…amas-in-3ds-Max

Video from ChaosGoupTV:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8IsX0vS1Uk&feature=youtu.be

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2. PHOTOSHOP

Now open your image in Photoshop or similar.

We will split the image in 12 square 1536x1536 images. We will save the first six (left eye) in a folder that we can call, for example:

01 Main

This is the folder where we will have our finished project. Put the images exactly these names, where obviously, r, l… means “Right, Left, Up, Down, Back, Front”.

pano_r.jpg
pano_l.jpg
pano_u.jpg
pano_d.jpg
pano_b.jpg
pano_f.jpg

Now we will do the same with the other six (right eye). We will put them in a different folder that we can call, for example:

02 Right eye temporary

You must put these images the same names (pano_r.jpg, pano_l.jpg…). This is the reason why left eye and right eyes must be in separate folders.

Now open the six images of left eye, one by one, in Photoshop. Flip them this way, and overwrite.

Front, Back, Left, Right → Flip horizontally
Up, Down → Flip vertically

I think the rule is simple: If you look horizontally, flip horizontally. If you look up or down, flip vertically.

Do the same with the six right eye images.

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3. KRPANO

At this point, we have a folder “01 Main” with the left eye six 1536x1536 images, and another folder “02 Right eye temporary” with the other six.

Select all left eye panos (pano_r.jpg, pano_l.jpg…) and drop them on the “MAKE VTOUR (NORMAL) droplet.bat”. Let the droplet finish. A new folder “vtour” is created inside “01 Main”.

You can check that the left pano looks right, by double-clicking on the file “tour.html” inside the vtour folder. Don’t forget that you will probably have to start the program “krpano Testing Server.exe” if you want to see them (I couldn’t understand the explanation, but it’s in the official tutorial in the main web page).

Select all right eye panos (pano_r.jpg, pano_l.jpg…) and drop them also on the “MAKE VTOUR (NORMAL) droplet.bat” droplet, and let it finish. A new folder “vtour” is created inside “02 Right eye temporary”.

You can also check that the right pano looks right, by double-clicking on the file “tour.html” inside the vtour folder.

Go back to the “01 Main” folder and search this folder:

01 Main/vtour/panos/pano.tiles

Rename the folder “pano.tiles” as “pano1_stereo_L”

Look inside the “02 Right eye temporary” folder and search this folder:

02 Right eye temporary/vtour/panos/pano.tiles

MOVE the folder “pano.tiles” into 01 Main/ vtour/panos (besides the “pano1_stereo_L” folder that we renamed before).

Rename the folder “pano.tiles” that we’ve just moved, to “pano1_stereo_R”.

You can delete the folder “vtour” inside “02 Right eye termporary folder”, as we are going to work from now on, only in the “01 Main” folder.

This is the structure of folders that we get:

We still can’t see the panos in stereo, but we are almost there.

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4. CODE EDITING

We need to go in the code but it is simple and easy done.

First of all, make a backup copy of the file “tour.xml”, in case something goes wrong.

Open tour.xml with a code editor. You will see there your scene, at the end of the document.

In the scene you will find <image> Make this change:

Replace:

<image>

by:

<image stereo="true" stereolabels="L|R">

(only in the first “image”). Almost done...

Now in the scene, look for “<cube url=” you will see it’s twice.

Replace:

<cube url=”panos/pano.tiles...” />

by

<cube url=”panos/pano1_stereo_%t...” />

It’s: change “pano.tiles” by the name that we gave to the panos folder, with -%t at the end. You can see it with this example:

At this moment, we have a scene with stereoscopic view. Now, let’s see how to add more scenes to or pano project. You can check that everything works by clicking again on “tour.html” file. As you can see, we didn’t modify this file, but it’s obvious that It’s reading the “tour.xml” file that we modified.

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5. ADDING A SECOND SCENE

Now you can repeat the whole process with another scene. The process that I’m going to explain might seem a little confusing. Please follow the instructions carefully. (It’s my personal way to do it, and perhaps others will be able to do it in a more simple way).

Create a completely separated folder called, for example, “Scene2”. Follow all the steps as before. You will first get a folder called “pano.tiles” for left eye. Rename it as “pano2_stereo_L”, and MOVE it inside the folder:

01 Main/vtour/panos/

of the first scene, together with the folders “pano1_stereo_L” and “pano1_stereo_R”.

Now, do the same for right eye of the second scene. Rename “pano.tiles” as “pano2_stereo_R”, and MOVE it inside the folder:

01 Main/vtour/panos/

of the first scene, together with the folders “pano1_stereo_L”, “pano1_stereo_R” and “pano2_stereo_L”.

You can see it in this scheme:

After doing this, you can delete the “vtour” folders of the second scene (as we did with the “vtour” folder of right eye in the first scene).

Open again tour.xml with a code editor.

Look for the scene at the bottom of the code. Select and copy the whole paragraph from “<scene name=…” to “</scene>”, and paste it below.

Edit the second paragraph, and change…

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6. ADDING HOTSPOTS

If you want to add hotspots, just use the tour_editor.html.

For a single pano you just do the same. And for a combination, just make sure the stereo pano has this <image stereo="true" stereolabels="L|R"> and the -L or -R in the tiles folder name. And don't forget the -%t

After creating the hotspots, if you open again the xml file, you will see something like this (no manual modifications this time).

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7. UPLOADING TO A WEB SERVER

At this point, you can see the panos in your computer. If you want to see the panos in your mobile phone, then you must store the files in a server. I do it in the same server where I have my web page, in a different folder called “pano”.

I just upload the files to that folder, and then I open the link to the tour.html file in my mobile phone in Google Chrome. I can see the split screen with both left and right images. Then I attach the mobile phone to the Google carboard glasses, and I can see the panos in stereo. I don’t know if there are more sophisticated methods to do this. In fact, I don’t use WebVR.

Any help is welcome in this matter.

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pilzlicht

Anfänger

Beiträge: 5

2

Dienstag, 24. Januar 2017, 16:01

hello frangarcia

great tutorial *thumbsup*

just a note, you can also drag all panos on the MAKEPANO (Multires)Droplet, if the naming is right, it should work faster, without the need to do step5.

cheers imke

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landrvr1

Schüler

Beiträge: 108

3

Samstag, 28. Januar 2017, 15:47

Zitat von »pilzlicht«

hello frangarcia

just a note, you can also drag all panos on the MAKEPANO (Multires)Droplet, if the naming is right, it should work faster, without the need to do step5.

You would still have to manually replace code - as described in step 4. *smile*

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alargueta

Anfänger

Beiträge: 1

4

Donnerstag, 23. Februar 2017, 17:44

Need help with the last step!

Zitat von »frangarcia«

[b]Hi there! New to krpano... I am currently on this final step. I can see the virtual tours as html files on my computer but am quite clueless as to how I can share them with others. I tried storing them on a server but am unable to load .html files. Any help with this is much appreciated! Thanks in advance.

[/b]
[b][b]7. UPLOADING TO A WEB SERVER

At
this point, you can see the panos in your computer. If you want to see
the panos in your mobile phone, then you must store the files in a
server. I do it in the same server where I have my web page, in a
different folder called “pano”.

I just
upload the files to that folder, and then I open the link to the
tour.html file in my mobile phone in Google Chrome. I can see the split
screen with both left and right images. Then I attach the mobile phone
to the Google carboard glasses, and I can see the panos in stereo. I
don’t know if there are more sophisticated methods to do this. In fact, I
don’t use WebVR.

Any help is welcome in this matter.[/b][/b]

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trinathm

Anfänger

Beiträge: 8

5

Samstag, 1. April 2017, 11:58

Stereo pano step by step

Dear Frangarcia,
Really an excellent tutorial for such people like me. I was trying to find how to create a stereo panorama in KRpano for a long time. Being a stupid in coding I am struggling like any thing. I will try with your step by step guide and come back with the result within a couple of days. However let me know that stereo panorama is possible only with Spherical pano( 6 faces of cube) or is it also possible with Cylindrical pano also. If yes how.....Thank you......
..........Trinath

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kgoulding

Anfänger

Beiträge: 6

6

Donnerstag, 3. August 2017, 06:11

Thank you for this detailed tutorial. It was particularly helpful in figuring out the ordering and flipping of the images.

I created a python script to take care of all the steps in this tutorial - slicing, renaming and generating the XML for the tour. Hopefully someone else also finds it useful.

https://github.com/gouldingken/krpano_tool_stereo

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klaus.krpano

Administrator

Beiträge: 13 499

7

Donnerstag, 3. August 2017, 12:37

Hi,

thanks for the script - but the current krpano version is already supporting stereoscopic images directly as input.

Please see here for more:
krpano 1.19-pr9 / 1.19-pr10 / 1.19-pr11

Best regards,
Klaus

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kgoulding

Anfänger

Beiträge: 6

8

Donnerstag, 3. August 2017, 17:18

That's awesome Klaus, thank you.

The new support works great. I wish I had started by trying the latest version!

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kgoulding

Anfänger

Beiträge: 6

9

Donnerstag, 3. August 2017, 22:47

One thing I noticed that is still not supported is the CUBE to SPHERE droplet for this type of input. Would it be possible to output a stacked equirectangular panorama from the cube strip? Some viewers (such as GoPro VR Player) for the Oculus and Vive use that format.

That would make my script truly obsolete ;-)

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