Cameras for 3d stereoscopic walk thru panorama?

Hi all

I'm wondering how you set-up cameras for a 3d stereoscopic walk thru? I want to render an outdoor scene for viewing on my cardboard goggles so that it is an immersive VR experience where the viewer can walk around.

Thanks for any tips

Paul

I think you're barking up the wrong tree with Autocad. A program like 3ds Max or Maya would be a better choice.

Here's a few tutorials:

http://renderman.pixar.com/view/stereo-rendering

http://cgcookie.com/max/2014/07/08/stereoscopic-3dsmax/

Thanks Cad64. I agree that AutoCAD is not the best choice by a long way for this kind of thing. I don't have access to Max or Maya at work though. Maybe I can apply the principles in the tutorials to AutoCAD? Or better still convince management to get Max/Maya.

The CGCookie tut was very interesting. I understand the workflow and process.

What I'm wondering is how the camera rig is setup for a walk through where you can look in 360 degrees for viewing through cardboard goggles? Does anyone have any info on that?

Anipath is what you are looking for.

There are some tutorials on YouTube

As mentioned, there are better programs for walk thru and even some add-ons around for AutoCAD to do a better job. http://www.rdvsystems.com/

If you want to try 3DS Max here is a Tutorial for Creating a Walkthrough from an AutoCAD Drawing.

What I'm wondering is how the camera rig is setup for a walk through where you can look in 360 degrees for viewing through cardboard goggles? Does anyone have any info on that?

It sounds like you're not looking to create a rendered animation where the camera starts at one location and ends at another location along a predefined path but rather a full environment where the viewer is free to wander around on their own, is that correct? I'm not sure how to do that stereoscopically. It's probably doable but I don't know what software you would use or how you would go about creating it since the cameras would have to be rendering on the fly as the viewer moves around the environment.

Maybe a game engine like Unreal or Unity?

http://www.stereoscopynews.com/hotnews/3d-games/others/2410-unreal-engine-3-handles-3d-stereo

http://paulbourke.net/stereographics/Unitystereo/

http://www.crytek.com/news/-crytek-adds-stereoscopic-3d-support-and-tools-to-cryengine-3

SLW210 - sorry I haven't really explained very well what i'm trying to achieve. I now believe the correct term is side by side stereo pairs. This is an example of one that you can view with a set of cardboard goggles

http://cardboard.autodesk.com/panogl.html?url=panos/2dd76621-7b16-496f-95e2-e94cf7ef767d

Cad64 - yes that's correct. A full rendered environment rendered as side by side stereo pairs for viewing on cardboard goggles. Game engine is an interesting approach, thanks for the links.

The quality of the effect will depend on how far away objects are in your virtual world, I would imagine that the target would remain fixed and you just want to take 2 renders with a camera at places about 3cm to either side of where you are wanting to view from (which is about the distance between your eyes). Does splitting the Autocad screen into 2 viewports allow the use of 2 camera positions and render both together. I use LT so can't test it.

A pair of stereo images can be made with any 3D CAD system that supports perspective. To be most effective, the two images that form the stereo pair should address some special characteristics.

For AutoCAD you need to create two camera views. The camera should be placed side-by-side and, for best results, point in the same direction (their viewing centerlines are parallel) to produce what’s called an off-axis projection. To do this with AutoCAD you will need to render two images and then trim off the left side of the image for the left eye and the right side of the image for the right eye. In determining the positioning of the cameras you should consider the depth of field of the scene and consider that your focal plane is in the middle (as measured from the camera) of the scene action. For example, if your scene is a bunch of blocks you should determine which block is farthest away and which is closest and consider that your viewing plane is somewhere in between. A rule of thumb is that the distance between the two cameras should be about 1/20 to 1/30 the distance from the camera to the center of action.

Because there will be a certain number of pixels that do not overlap when the two images are viewed, you will need to trim the two rendered images. Be sure that you know the final resolution that you want so that you can calculate the required rendering resolution to be cut down later. The following equation will help you determine this:

delta = (w*e)/(f* tan(φ/2))

Where:

delta = number of extra pixels you will have to cut off

w = intended width of the image (in number of pixels)

e = distance between the cameras

f = focal distance

φ = camera aperture (in degrees)

Once you have found delta, add this number to the final width that you want and set that as your rendering resolution width.

A good outline of stereo projection theory can be found here:

http://paulbourke.net/stereographics/stereorender/

Final note, if possible use an old fashion stereopticon, to view the final images!