Stereographer(engineersneedart.com)
engineersneedart.com
Stereographer
https://www.engineersneedart.com/stereographer/stereographer.html
32 comments
I've got a New Nintendo 3DS. I took a nice stereogram at the Vietnam War Memorial at the National Mall with it but that's about it.
My stereo production toolchain is based on PIL and PIL reads MPOs. An MPO is just two JPGs concatenated together so they aren't hard to read. My photog friends swear by Stereo Photo Maker but in my book it is "just another image processing program by people who don't understand gamma correction" but Adobe Photoshop is dangerously close to that category too.
My stereo production toolchain is based on PIL and PIL reads MPOs. An MPO is just two JPGs concatenated together so they aren't hard to read. My photog friends swear by Stereo Photo Maker but in my book it is "just another image processing program by people who don't understand gamma correction" but Adobe Photoshop is dangerously close to that category too.
I would love to play around with some consumer 3D stuff. Either some kit to take anaglyphs or a 3D camera. The Nintendo 3DS has a 3D camera as far as I understand and several years ago 3D image cellphones where a thing, too (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_3D-enabled_mobile_phon...) This seems to have turned into a dead end, though. Oh, and the Lytro, too.
If you wanna be ultra cheap and your subject is a still scene you can literally just use any camera like your smartphone and take two pics side by side in short succession, distanced apart by your human IPD (Inter-Pupillary Distance.)
Did you know your index finger is roughly 1 IPD from nail to knuckle? This is useful:
Hold your phone sideways, look where your lens is in the horizontal axis and align your left index finger's knuckle such that you're holding the phone edge with it but your knuckle is lined up just above the lens... Snap a pic. (This will be your left eye pic.) — Now keep your left index straight as-is and with your right hand gently grip your phone and slide it horizontally such that the lens previously lined up above your knuckle is now aligned just below the tip of your left index finger nail. Now snap another pic. (This is your right eye pic.)
Now put them in a collage side by side in Photoshop or whatever, and make it small and cross your eyes. If you kept your alignment fairly you should now have a respectable 3D photo.
Voila! 3D photos on the cheap, as long as your subjects stand still between the two pics.
Did you know your index finger is roughly 1 IPD from nail to knuckle? This is useful:
Hold your phone sideways, look where your lens is in the horizontal axis and align your left index finger's knuckle such that you're holding the phone edge with it but your knuckle is lined up just above the lens... Snap a pic. (This will be your left eye pic.) — Now keep your left index straight as-is and with your right hand gently grip your phone and slide it horizontally such that the lens previously lined up above your knuckle is now aligned just below the tip of your left index finger nail. Now snap another pic. (This is your right eye pic.)
Now put them in a collage side by side in Photoshop or whatever, and make it small and cross your eyes. If you kept your alignment fairly you should now have a respectable 3D photo.
Voila! 3D photos on the cheap, as long as your subjects stand still between the two pics.
I have a Lytro Illium and the software for it is supposed to make stereograms but so far I've failed to get any depth out of it.
This
https://www.kandaovr.com/qoocam-ego
is probably the best easy-to-use stereo camera on the market today.
This
https://www.kandaovr.com/qoocam-ego
is probably the best easy-to-use stereo camera on the market today.
In about the $300-ish range, the FUJIFILM (and a few Lumix) stereo cameras are still available on eBay.
The 3DS does indeed have a 3d camera, and it produces MPO files, so theoretically it should be perfect for use with this app.
phew, mans said "Lytro" ...
Canon released a lens to simplify stereoscopy: https://www.usa.canon.com/shop/p/rf5-2mm-f2-8-l-dual-fisheye...
I have one of these
https://www.kandaovr.com/qoocam-ego
occasionally I've made a red-cyan anaglyph that has been really striking and I also view my stereograms with a Meta Quest 3. (Though I really want one of these to shoot pano https://us.kandaovr.com/products/obsidian-r)
I've done a lot of debugging as to why some images don't work as well as I expect them to, the last discovery I made it is the Ego has a little bit of pincushion distortion so objects in the L and R channels don't line up perfectly vertically and my stereographer friends all think that's bad. (I am transitioning now from "bored of photography" to "biggest studio project ever" so maybe I will find time to photograph a grid and make a filter to undo the pincushioning)
I think the best formula I've found for stereograms is a group portrait where the background is really far in the background. I slide the L/R channels horizontally to keep the image close to the paper which makes the image look like an ordinary photo but a little blurry/stylized but then you put on the glasses and wow. Other than that though it's been really hit or miss and I haven't really found "my vision" in stereography yet.
https://www.kandaovr.com/qoocam-ego
occasionally I've made a red-cyan anaglyph that has been really striking and I also view my stereograms with a Meta Quest 3. (Though I really want one of these to shoot pano https://us.kandaovr.com/products/obsidian-r)
I've done a lot of debugging as to why some images don't work as well as I expect them to, the last discovery I made it is the Ego has a little bit of pincushion distortion so objects in the L and R channels don't line up perfectly vertically and my stereographer friends all think that's bad. (I am transitioning now from "bored of photography" to "biggest studio project ever" so maybe I will find time to photograph a grid and make a filter to undo the pincushioning)
I think the best formula I've found for stereograms is a group portrait where the background is really far in the background. I slide the L/R channels horizontally to keep the image close to the paper which makes the image look like an ordinary photo but a little blurry/stylized but then you put on the glasses and wow. Other than that though it's been really hit or miss and I haven't really found "my vision" in stereography yet.
Something not often considered is that cross-eyed stereograms allow for both better focus and (if desired by the artist) also stronger depth when someone is viewing the image without hardware assistance.
The two unassisted viewing options for the majority of people are either crossing your eyes or looking through the image to infinity. Intentional exotropia is completely off the table, because almost nobody can do that (because there's no natural point to doing it, unlike crossing which is how you look at things near your face).
And the problems with looking through the image to infinity are that
1) If the image is near you, you're now naturally focusing far away, which means you're not focusing up close on the image plane like you would be if your eyes were crossing, so the image is blurry without an unnatural muscle behavior.
2) If the image is meaningfully far away, the angular difference you can achieve between it and a horizon vanishing point is just too small to achieve overlap between the halves unless the image itself is very small, which you then won't be able to see anyway.
The two unassisted viewing options for the majority of people are either crossing your eyes or looking through the image to infinity. Intentional exotropia is completely off the table, because almost nobody can do that (because there's no natural point to doing it, unlike crossing which is how you look at things near your face).
And the problems with looking through the image to infinity are that
1) If the image is near you, you're now naturally focusing far away, which means you're not focusing up close on the image plane like you would be if your eyes were crossing, so the image is blurry without an unnatural muscle behavior.
2) If the image is meaningfully far away, the angular difference you can achieve between it and a horizon vanishing point is just too small to achieve overlap between the halves unless the image itself is very small, which you then won't be able to see anyway.
Of course I can't view cross-eyed stereograms, but I can look through the image. Likely the author is the same way?
[edit]
Some people have asked how I read things that are up close if I can't cross my eyes; I close one eye.
[edit]
Some people have asked how I read things that are up close if I can't cross my eyes; I close one eye.
If your eyes are exactly parallel the distance to the image shouldn’t affect its required size. The images need to be exactly as far apart as your pupils, and that doesn’t change with distance. Of course, your eyes don’t need to be exactly parallel so there is some wiggle room to the size.
> the distance to the image shouldn’t affect its required size.
You probably mean this differently than how I'm reading it, because distance of any image affects the required size for its contents to be discernible. Billboards are very large for a reason.
You probably mean this differently than how I'm reading it, because distance of any image affects the required size for its contents to be discernible. Billboards are very large for a reason.
This is really cool! I've had a lot of fun using MiDaS[0] for creating stereograms and also in robotics for depth estimation.
[0] https://github.com/isl-org/MiDaS
[0] https://github.com/isl-org/MiDaS
You should try the new V2 of Meat's incredible DepthAnything model:
https://depth-anything-v2.github.io/
It blows MiDaS out of the water imho.
It blows MiDaS out of the water imho.
*Meta, not Meat. Damn autocorrect!
Oh excellent! This looks really good, thank you.
If you take stereo photos and want a way to view them. Go to an Antique store and get a stereoscope. They can be purchased inexpensively. Have your photos printed on 5x7 with the images arranged like a stereo card. Perfect color, prints are inexpensive, if your willing to send away you can get photos on matte paper so they look better than most stereo cards.
A long time I used two small consumer cameras mounted on a rail side by side and combined the two photographs on my TV (which was 3D capable with simple passive goggles), which produced quite nice 3D photos.
Triggering the two cameras was completely manual but worked almost all time, even when taking photos objects in slow motion, as example people o animals.
For this part of photography experimenting it is a bit unfortunately that all TV builders abandoned the 3D capability of their TV sets.
Triggering the two cameras was completely manual but worked almost all time, even when taking photos objects in slow motion, as example people o animals.
For this part of photography experimenting it is a bit unfortunately that all TV builders abandoned the 3D capability of their TV sets.
This is great! I was once the proud owner of an HTC Evo 3D, a smartphone that took 3D photos and displayed them natively with a lenticular display. It also ran hot as hell and was pretty much unusable until I added after-market swipe-spelling and an alternative app browser. It also took MPO format pictures.
As near as I could tell at the time, the MPO format is literally just two JPEGs directly appended in one file.
As near as I could tell at the time, the MPO format is literally just two JPEGs directly appended in one file.
You can also combine two images and flip them in a gif constantly to see it in 3d.
Makes it a lot more accessable on the internet too :)
Makes it a lot more accessable on the internet too :)
There's a way to build a 3-D adapter setup (with mirrors) for an SLR-style camera that actually splits the image across horizontally, so you get two wide images instead of two narrow ones. Not sure if that's useful for a stereoscope, however. For video or projection, it would be superior.
3-D pictures are very entertaining and atmospheric. I have a Kodak stereo camera that I've taken on trips to various countries since high school, and a 3-D projector and silver screen. With polarized glasses, you can walk right up to the screen and still see the depth.
After seeing it, people almost always asked where they could get this or why it isn't used more.
The movie studios deserve scorn for ruining the marketability of 3-D yet again by releasing one fake "3-D" movie after another, as we finally had really good and widespread 3-D projection available.
3-D pictures are very entertaining and atmospheric. I have a Kodak stereo camera that I've taken on trips to various countries since high school, and a 3-D projector and silver screen. With polarized glasses, you can walk right up to the screen and still see the depth.
After seeing it, people almost always asked where they could get this or why it isn't used more.
The movie studios deserve scorn for ruining the marketability of 3-D yet again by releasing one fake "3-D" movie after another, as we finally had really good and widespread 3-D projection available.
The movie industry got stuck in a terrible place with 3-D as an "add on" to a regular movie that contextualizes 3-D as just another money grab. The trouble is somewhere around 5-10% people find stereo movies uncomfortable and 20% or so people are stereo blind and don't get anything out of them.
So you have to show the same movie in both formats which, as it see it, is something that costs money instead of making money, and is only going to work for movies big enough and theaters big enough to be able to do that. (e.g. the multiplex at the mall is part of a chain that teeters on the edge of bankruptcy so the local arthouse theater sometimes shows movies like "Deadpool & Wolverine" in their first run)
People associate 3-d with that kind of movie but actually the rapid cuts and motion of movies like that don't give your brain time to lock onto stereo whereas documentaries (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Station_3D) and dramatic content are really powerful.
I have some software that works like Disney's multiplane camera (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiplane_camera) that I use for synthesizing stereo scenes (and other things) and one problem that turns up is that the curvature of objects hides some pixels from one eye but not the other eye. You can't just cut some objects out of the scene and slide those parts relative to each other but you've got to have something for those pixels or make something up. The flip side of that however is that a stereo picture of a close up of a person shows maybe 10-15% more area of the face which means more of the little muscles that indicate emotion. You are seeing a little bit more in a 3-d movie just as you see a little bit more when you see actors on stage and even if you're not aware of it consciously I think it adds to your emotional reaction.
(... so far that software has used a simple rendering approach but I'm very likely to upgrade it to do ray tracing because I want to get very accurate depth of field effects including occlusion)
So you have to show the same movie in both formats which, as it see it, is something that costs money instead of making money, and is only going to work for movies big enough and theaters big enough to be able to do that. (e.g. the multiplex at the mall is part of a chain that teeters on the edge of bankruptcy so the local arthouse theater sometimes shows movies like "Deadpool & Wolverine" in their first run)
People associate 3-d with that kind of movie but actually the rapid cuts and motion of movies like that don't give your brain time to lock onto stereo whereas documentaries (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Station_3D) and dramatic content are really powerful.
I have some software that works like Disney's multiplane camera (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiplane_camera) that I use for synthesizing stereo scenes (and other things) and one problem that turns up is that the curvature of objects hides some pixels from one eye but not the other eye. You can't just cut some objects out of the scene and slide those parts relative to each other but you've got to have something for those pixels or make something up. The flip side of that however is that a stereo picture of a close up of a person shows maybe 10-15% more area of the face which means more of the little muscles that indicate emotion. You are seeing a little bit more in a 3-d movie just as you see a little bit more when you see actors on stage and even if you're not aware of it consciously I think it adds to your emotional reaction.
(... so far that software has used a simple rendering approach but I'm very likely to upgrade it to do ray tracing because I want to get very accurate depth of field effects including occlusion)
"The movie industry got stuck in a terrible place with 3-D as an "add on" to a regular movie"
Well, they didn't just "get stuck" there; they put themselves there. That was a choice. They should have shot in 3-D when they wanted to release in 3-D, and refrained from post-processed fake 3-D in all cases.
Seth Rogan said that he and... I don't remember, maybe the director of Green Hornet wanted to shoot in 3-D and the studio turned them down. After it was done, the studio changed its mind and made it into fake 3-D.
And yes, there's a misperception that "action" and "spectacle" movies are the best for 3-D. Wrong. The coolest 3-D pictures I've shot are often indoor scenes with lots of objects; for example, a long dinner table set with dishware and glasses, with an open door in the background revealing a cobblestone street.
Most people scoffing at "3-D" have probably seen almost none of it. Many people have only seen one legitimate 3-D movie: Avatar. Otherwise they might have seen a Pixar movie rendered in 3-D; or if they're lucky, Hugo. Or the Transformers one where they tear up Chicago. Most did not see Drive Angry.
Beyond that, I'm hard-pressed to name a modern movie shot in 3-D.
Well, they didn't just "get stuck" there; they put themselves there. That was a choice. They should have shot in 3-D when they wanted to release in 3-D, and refrained from post-processed fake 3-D in all cases.
Seth Rogan said that he and... I don't remember, maybe the director of Green Hornet wanted to shoot in 3-D and the studio turned them down. After it was done, the studio changed its mind and made it into fake 3-D.
And yes, there's a misperception that "action" and "spectacle" movies are the best for 3-D. Wrong. The coolest 3-D pictures I've shot are often indoor scenes with lots of objects; for example, a long dinner table set with dishware and glasses, with an open door in the background revealing a cobblestone street.
Most people scoffing at "3-D" have probably seen almost none of it. Many people have only seen one legitimate 3-D movie: Avatar. Otherwise they might have seen a Pixar movie rendered in 3-D; or if they're lucky, Hugo. Or the Transformers one where they tear up Chicago. Most did not see Drive Angry.
Beyond that, I'm hard-pressed to name a modern movie shot in 3-D.
The Hobbit films were shot in native 3D, and 48hz. It's a shame we can't get the high frame rate version at home, more of a shame we can't get Avatar The Way of Water at 48. The hobbit could've worked as 2 films, but 3 was stretching it too far.
I've been feeling a lot of "the web is dying" lately. When I search for something, the results are often SEO glurge, AI-generated nonsense, AI-generated nonsense directly in the search results, or some unholy combination of all three where the search engine AI-generates some sort of summary based on decade-old bullshit SEO glurge.
This article is a great reminder of what the web used to be and what some corners of the web still are: a smart, creative person using effort to share something they care about with the world.
I don't want AIs giving me sanitized informational summaries. I want meaningful stories told by people.
I love it.
This article is a great reminder of what the web used to be and what some corners of the web still are: a smart, creative person using effort to share something they care about with the world.
I don't want AIs giving me sanitized informational summaries. I want meaningful stories told by people.
I love it.
Have you tried https://search.marginalia.nu yet?
I've toyed around with it. I also use DuckDuckGo on my phone. They're OK.
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I was looking at my old 3DS photos just recently, and there's not much software to read MPO files, so this project looks pretty darn cool and I'll be checking it out.
Something that I'm sure some people aren't aware of is that the 3DS's 640x480 photos don't match the resolution or aspect ratio of the 15:9 400x240 (800x240, but halved horizontally for 3D) screen, so the 3DS photo gallery actually shows photos zoomed in by default. If you didn't know this, now you can revisit your 3DS photos and see extra photo for free by pulling down on the circle pad.
Edit: I should mention - I did say that there's not much software that reads MPO files, but one program that does is StereoPhoto Maker. https://stereo.jpn.org/eng/stphmkr/index.html I haven't tried it out yet, but it supports aligning and batch-processing 3D images, among other features.