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Disney Research Creates Megastereo - Panoramas With Depth
mikejuk writes "Disney Research has made a breakthrough in implementing the technique of acquiring depth information from a simple camera scan of a scene. For a perfect panorama you need to rotate the camera around its optical center, i.e. just rotate the camera. However, if you just rotate the camera about itself you don't get any parallax effects — which is why it makes the stitching together easier. If you want to get 3D information from the sequence of shots you need parallax. This means rotating the camera mounted on an offset arm or just moving the camera along an arc in your outstretched hand. The big problem with this method is that the parallax makes it more difficult to fit the mosaic together, and this is the problem that the research team has been working on. Using a range of different scanning methods the results can be converted into high resolution panoramas automatically complete with 3D information."
Are there any algorithms out there that can take a movie, and produce a sharp photo (or a series of sharp photos)?
By "sharp", I mean much sharper than each of the individual frames of the movie.
I.e., the algorithm should use information between subsequent frames to sharpen the image.
If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
I've been a long-time panoramic and 3D photography enthusiast, and have gigabytes of data that could be fed straight into this software.
Shooting a 3D photograph is easy (just take two frames, correct issues in software later); shooting panoramas is easy (let the stitchers do their job); shooting a 3D panorama has always been too much work for me.
It's a pity I can't get my hands on any working code yet, and any commercial product is probably way off in the future.
Also, here's a link to their paper[PDF] for those interested. It's quite readable.
It's based on this invention: http://www.vision.huji.ac.il/stereo/
Yael Pritch (who was involved in this project in Disney) was also involved in this research in the Hebrew University.
So it's a breakthrough, but a very old one and, more importantly, somebody else's
Also, it would still be technically easier to to with two cameras or a stereo camera.
Yes, it will be, but there is a serious lack of 3D stereo equipment on the market today. Affordable stereo cameras are not of high quality, and I have yet to see one with adjustable lens separation. Two camera solutions come at twice the cost, size, weight and battery worries.
Also, if I can't afford one D3x, I surely can't afford two of those plus a sync kit and a tripod, nor would I want to carry such a setup with me on a hike. There are plenty situations when all you have is one camera, and you want to make the most with what you have.
Additionally, there's plenty of panoramic data out there shot without a panoramic tripod that can be fed straight into their algorithm. I know I have plenty, since I've shot many panoramas, but never had a pano head (and many of those were shot hand-held).
Therefore, while this may not be the best solution to shoot a 3D panorama, it still has plenty of applications in processing existing data or dealing with situations where specialized equipment is not available.
Anytime someone reads Disney creates they should substitute the word "copies" until proven otherwise. Disney has a long and storied history of intellectual property theft when it was in their best interest. They are arguably the greatest hypocrites in the world about IP, even more so than Hollywood themselves. They are always the ones that hold the most radical of views in the MPAA and are very quick to hold condemn anyone else and take away their rights. They have also been stealing from the public domain and other individuals for ideas for decades. A quick Google search can find example upon example of their bad behavior.
This allows Hollywood to film a two-hour forty minute movie about a guy impersonating Superman who kills people with his bare hands and lets hundreds of thousands of people be brutally slaughtered while he punches a guy and calls him profane names.
Hey Hollywood. Put After Effects down and hire a writer. Nobody gives a fuck about graphics any more. We're sick of watching cities get destroyed. Hire a fucking writer.
You can't use this technique to convert and already filmed 2D to fake 3D. This technique works by filming those "occluded areas" already, much like a 3d camera would.