APPLYING THE FUNDAMENTALS OF 3D - Part 1

Fundamentals - PART 1

Thumbs, horses, frogs and birds.

Over the coming months and years as the 3D hype builds and escalates, you will encounter 3D references about movies, television, cell phones, computer displays, games and that big screen in the family room.

Before you can understand all this, it really helps to understand why and how you can see 3D at all.

Stereopsis is the ability to see 3D. It is also known as depth-perception. The reason humans can do this has as much to do with our thumbs, as with our eyes. Yup... our thumbs!

Because we have opposable thumbs, we are very good at manipulating objects. And because we manipulate objects, it really helps to have a very good sense of depth-perception. Think how hard it would be to thread a needled if you could not perceive the needle and thread in 3D.

That is also why our eyes are located in front of our face. To see 3D, you need to look at objects from two slightly different angles. The two images that form in your two eyes and are sent to the brain, don't quite line up.

If you want to check this out, hold your hand in front of your face. Now close one eye, then the other. Do this sequentially back and forth. You'll notice that your hand appears to be in two different places in context to the background. Your brain knows how to calculate this difference into distance from the eyes. Pretty neat stuff!

It also means that if you happen to be blind in one eye, you can't see in 3D.

Horses don't have thumbs and probably can't see 3D very well. Their eyes are located more on the left and right sides of their face instead of in front. This has the advantage of a very wide field-of-view. They are better at seeing everything around them and running away if there is a problem. Humans gave up field-of-view, but we have better 3D (and can throw rocks).

A frog has eyes that look to both sides and can also swivel forward. Proportionate to their head size, their eyes are set apart much wider than ours. This is a good 3D enhancement for frogs. A frog needs really good 3D to flick that tongue out and nail insects flying by. Without 3D frogs would not be able to catch flying bugs.

A lot of birds and lizard are 3D hybrids.

They tend to have their eyes totally on the sides of their head and are really good at seeing two giant bubbles of image all around.

It help to avoid being eaten. But did you ever notice a lizard or a bird bobbing their heads up and down? Guess what they are doing? They are making two images, one over the other, in order to get a 3D picture of their surroundings. Ain't nature clever?

SUMMARY:

You can see 3D because you have two eyes that are offset so that each one observes the scene from a slightly different angle. This helps us to have depth perception, which is essential to refined manipulation of objects.

In order to create 3D media you need to generate or capture two pictures of each scene from similarly set apart views.

Then, in order to show that media in 3D, you need to get those two images separately into each of your eyes.

All 3D technology is based on this foundation. Most of the discussion about 3D on the Applying Technology blog will, in one way or another, also be built on this foundation.

So, this is Theo Applying The Fundamentals of 3D technology to thumbs, horses, frogs and birds.

Applying 3D Technology - A NEW SERIES

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APPLYING 3D TECHNOLOGY

In this series we will be exploring "What is 3D: from many angles". We will include the technologies that allow it. And as always, the view will be through the primary lens of: "Applying 3D Technology"

So please join us and follow this new series on the Applying Technology Blog.

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3D IS HOT right now.

3D (Stereoscopic) media has been around a while. The StereoScope itself was invented by Sir Charles Wheatstone in 1838. So the idea of looking at 3D media is nearly 175 years old!

Much more recently, I was postulating that 2010 might be the tipping point for 3D. No one is more excited than I am that it is seems to be happening.

• Major film spectacles are releasing in 3D and the capability is becoming common in more and more multiplex theaters.
• Most major home-video display manufacturers are rolling out 3D capable models.
• Sport media, a major driver for many home entertainment technologies is getting ready to rock.
• Video gaming, whose profound effect on high-technology cannot be overstated, is taking a giant push into this arena.
• Next week's SID (Society For Information Display) convention is Seattle has a major 3D theme.

I based the above prediction on my experience as the CEO of Panoram Technologies, where we build more than 120 stereoscopic immersive data visualization facilities between 1997 and 2007.

These "wrap-around" immersive rooms for 6-10 people were capable of rendering real-time 3D computer graphics from super-computers. You have probably seen them on the oil company commercials.

In 2005, I also had a chance to write, produce and direct a high-resolution 3D museum film. This provided a great deal of insight into the processes, challenges, methods and benefits of producing media in the medium.

BOTTOM LINE

• Why is 3D HOT NOW!?
• Why should you care?
• Do you need 3D?
• Do you want 3D?
• and of course, HOW DO YOU APPLY 3D?

It's Theo exploring the many dimensions of APPLYING 3D TECHNOLOGY.

Applying Image Stitching Technology For Exploring Paris

This is an amazing web page!
A group of imaging adventurers got together to put together a 26 GigaPixel image of Paris. The results are breath taking.

Go to the site at http://www.paris-26-gigapixels.com/index-en.html



If you have a mouse with wheel, your navigation is simple and instinctive. If you do not, you will need to use the on-screen navigation tool. This is a bit clunkier but does not diminish the experience much at all.

Not only did the team stitch together a breathtaking panorama of this wonderful city, but they also employ a texture dissolving technology that smoothly fades to closer and closer shots as you zoom into the image. This is a relative of the technology that was originally developed by Keyhole and that forms the foundation of how Google Earth works.

As you zoom in, you just keep getting closer and closer with the sharpness of the image restoring as the next texture downloads.

The result allows you to see which window sills need painting from on a building 3 kilos away!

The music they chose for this virtual tour is also striking. It is La Valse d’Amélie from the soundtrack of the movie “Amelie” (Le Fabuleux Destin d’Amélie Poulain). The author is the French musician and composer Yann Tiersen.

Check out http://www.autopano.net/en/ for the company that provided the panoramic stitching software.

IMAGINING APPLICATIONS
They placed the installation up on the roof of the high-rise, nestled up among the antenna farms about three kilometers from London's new Olympic facilities.

The imaging array looked like dual 2 meter radar balls, except for the bristling collection of lenses that sprouted from each. Some lenses were telephoto, while others were wide angle, each lens feeding its light to a 25 megapixel image capturing chip.

In total, the 500 lenses from each ball provided a 260 degree wide, 100 degree tall, 25 gigapixel, stereoscopic panorama of the city that lay below. It captured a new image of the city every 30th of a second and in the time space between the image captures, a bank of GPUs (graphic processing units) processed the image into a massive 3D world you could fly around in.

The super video system had been conceived as a security measure for the 2012 London Olympic Games. It had since become a major tourist attraction in the burgeoning "virtual tourism" trade.

Privacy concerns had spawned some protests in the beginning, but those faded away as soon as crime statistics showed massively reduced incidents and increased arrests on west facing London streets. It was simply not a good idea to assault someone or steal a car under the glaring globes that somehow got dubbed SuperAnaCam.

Most of west facing London simply knew that they needed to draw their shades for privacy... To the Facebook generation, it simply seemed like another online exploration - although a new phenom developed with the tweeting of image location where you could to catch a "window show".

New installations were being planned in major and even minor metros, inspiring vistas, and other key locations around the globe. Rumors circulated that Google was going to buy the company and integrate the AnaCams into a real-time view on Google Earth.

This is Theo, imagining technology applications in REALLY high res.