Posts by kimblarsen

    http://digitalurban.blogspot.com/2009/06/locall…-to-reduce.html

    Locally Adapted Projections to Reduce Panorama Distortions presented at the Eurographics Symposium on Rendering 2009.

    As the blog entry states there is a dispute with the idea and proof of concept linked to the work of Helmut Dersch

    It could perhaps be implemented into krpano in the future?

    Cheers, Kim

    what's a chrome ball?

    A smallish mirror ball or near perfect reflective sphere usually put on a tripod and photographed in 6, 9 or more different exposures to capture a light probe (360 degree high dynamic range image) of the environment. This pano image, usually in the .hdr or .exr format (you would really need to photograph the chrome ball from two different positions to capture a full 360 sphere proper) is used to light CG scenes. As mentioned it is an alternative to using a fisheye lens to shoot a panorama but you do get a less quality 360 image, and ideally would need to retouch out the photographer and tripod used to photograph the chrome ball (hence using a telephoto lens to photograph it is common)

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_dynamic_range_imaging

    Cheers, Kim

    We are going that route too, although with two Canon 5Ds, one being a Mark II. On film sets there is always two VFX crews when capturing scene info photographically. One unit (person) capturing the HDR probe, usually with a fisheye setup or chrome ball, and a second unit for capturing a high resolution panorama using a Rodeon rig or manually with Manfrotto/Nodal Ninja etc for set extension purposes. We have similar use for a low rez HDR probe for lighting our CG scenes, and the high res pano for backgrounds and high res panoramas.

    What I would like to do is have the two rigs with me on every shoot both with separate tripods and cameras, although I think swapping lenses from time to time will happen since people will always want to use the mark II for other things than HDRs.

    I have revised my thoughts on lens and panorig for HDR - for sure going for the Sigma 8mm + the Nodal Ninja 180.

    Cheers, Kim

    sigma 4.5m nodal ninja
    sigma 8.m nodal ninja
    sunex fixed aperture of f/5.6 & panoramic rotator is designed exclusively for Sunex SuperFisheye lenses for making 360° immersive images from 2, 3 or 4 shots. This versatile and user-friendly rotator has 4 detent positions (0°, 120°, 180° and 240°). Its kinematic mount design positions the lens nodal point precisely on the axis of rotation. No special tool is required to engage or dis-engage the lens


    Hi Tim,

    For low resolution, high quality panoramas including HDRI probes I am tempted to go with the below solution, although it is rather an expensive one. The Sunex lens is two shots per pano instead of three with the Sigma. Do we know if is optically similar or better in quality than the Sigma 8mm?

    * Canon 5D mk II full frame: $3300
    * Sigma 8mm w/Canon mount - or the Sunex lens : aprox. $800 - $900
    * Nodal Ninja Ultimate R1: $380
    * Gitzo GT1932 Series 1 Basalt 3 Section G-Lock Tripod: $300

    Prices are aprox. from online stores, Amazon etc. With the Ultimate R1 rig I would just leave the fisheye lens permanently attached to the lens ring. I assume Nodal Ninja would first have to custom make a new lens ring for the Sunex lens?

    Cheers,
    Kim

    to patch the zenith and nadir I found a great trick. take you equirectagular image at 2:1 and flip the image 180 upside down, then go to Filter -> distort -> polar cooridinates select square to polar and apply. it will apply polar cooridiantes to your image and the hole at the bottom ends up and exact circle and can be clone stamped in photo shop very easily now. it also format the iamge so if you have a nadir cap or logo you just drag in over the hole then undo the previoos steps. Filter -> distort -> polar cooridinates select polar to square and apply. rotate back 180 and your hole is patched neatly.

    Here is a Photoshop script from a friend of mine - Rune Spans - which will help you do the touch up/clone stamping of nadir and zenith
    http://www.superrune.com/technical/software_supercubic.php

    Cheers,
    Kim

    but it should be possible to overcome this limits, but I'm not sure if the flashplayer could
    play/decode such large videos

    do you have short examples of such high resolution videos?

    cubical faces for videos would be possible too,
    but this will come later (the video support is planned for 1.0.9 release)

    So with cubical face support you could have each cube face be a video of 4096x4096 pixels Flash video. But as you say, a panorama with 6 video streams at 4k x 4k rez would probably take a heavy performance penalty in terms of framerate and smoothness of panning etc.

    I assume you are thinking of a high rez CG videopano Greg since capturing a live action panorama of this resolution (unless it is timelapse or some other non-realtime capture of reality) would be rather difficult?

    Cheers,
    Kim

    Thanks Klaus. Gosh *whistling* *pinch* talk about feeling stupid... basic math. I guess sometimes when the solution is staring at you, right in front of your face you dont see it. Cannot see the forest for the trees.

    When using a different tilesize then you of course have to recalculate the tiledimagewidth and tiledimageheight based on your tilesize.

    Cheers,
    Kim

    Hi Klaus,

    Unfortunately that did not do the trick. The tiles are 256 by 256, and there seems to be a problem with this with respect to the code.

    <image type="SPHERE" multires="true" tilesize="256" baseindex="0">

    I have zipped the files and sent you the archive.

    Cheers,
    Kim

    Hi,

    I have a question on how to change or overcome different types of dicing up and organizing a multires panorama.

    The reason is that panoramas that are already diced up either through custom scripts in Photoshop, or using the Silverlight DZ photoshop plugin - http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/redmo…oshopplugin.htm - might use a different format, naming convention and folder organization than what you get with the kmaketiles.

    Below is the edited example XML for a standard krpano multires pano. It stores each LOD tiles in a separate folder.

    <krpano version="1.0.8">
    <preview url="hafenpreview.jpg" details="12"/>

    <image type="SPHERE" multires="yes" multiresthreshold="0" tilesize="1024" baseindex="1">

    <level tiledimagewidth="2048" tiledimageheight="1024">
    <sphere url="1k/hafen1k_%0V%0U.jpg"/>
    </level>

    <level tiledimagewidth="4096" tiledimageheight="2048">
    <sphere url="2k/hafen2k_%0V%0U.jpg"/>
    </level>

    <level tiledimagewidth="6144" tiledimageheight="3072">
    <sphere url="3k/hafen3k_%0V%0U.jpg"/>
    </level>

    </image>
    </krpano>

    Now the kmaketiles dice the tiles in rows first and then colums, while other programs may do the opposite. This is not a problem though since you can use %u and %v in the file name and swap them around as you please.

    My problem though is that krpano expects the columns to be numbered from 1 rather than from 0 which is what I would get from some other program. In addition it seems that it is NOT possible to keep the tiles in sub folder under each separate LOD level folder using the % variable.

    Perhaps there is an easy XML fix to read in the tiles in a different way, but my XML skills are unfortunately not up to it. Below is an example of the folder structure for one of the multires panoramas I am trying to get into krpano without having to rename the files or move them about on the server. Note that the LOD name is at the end of the file name.

    Any help and advice much appreciated.

    Cheers,
    Kim