HOME | DD
kidscruff — fields cottage study
Published: 2007-10-26 22:20:22 +0000 UTC; Views: 9565; Favourites: 264; Downloads: 0
Redirect to original
Description
Phew.My "Panosaurus" multi-row panoramic head (made by the tireless promoter of panoramas for the masses, Greg Rubottom ) arrived via courier this afternoon, from the lovely people at Speed Graphic who got it to me on the day they said they would, which online stores rarely do, so credit to them.
Having bought a multi-row panoramic head, I decided that the freeware stitching program that Nikon very graciously gave away with their Coolpix 5400 was no longer up to my needs. I shopped around a bit on some forums, and discovered that the dreadful PTGui wasn't the only Mac-friendly Panorama Tools front-end interface, and that actually, the clever folks at Kekus Digital made a front-end for Panorama Tools known as PTMac .
PTMac works like a dream, and the interface is very intuitive and straight-forward. I'm new to the whole equirectangular 360ºx180º panoramic game, having only stitched single-row panoramas previously, but I picked it up fairly quickly. I had trouble with blending, but after some tweaking and downloading of plug-ins (free from the Kekus Digital download page, titled "Enblend 3.0" and "Xblend", I got the worst of it sorted.
So, having much more important, urgent and pressing work to be doing for my dissertation and the like, I decided a much better use of my time would be to make a full 360º panorama of the study at my parents house, in which I was supposed to be working. It came out pretty well, although the blend is still a bit off, but nothing that the clone tool and a few hours wouldn't cure. Next time, I'll refrain from mounting the tripod on a patterned rug, as the nadir shot meant that a perfect removal of the visible tripod legs wasn't great.
Next up in the software arsenal came Flexify 2 from the lovely code-monkeys at Flaming Pear .
This is a wonderous program that accepts many different sorts of panoramas and formats, from simple single-row 180º panoramas to full-on 360ºx180º equirectangular images, mirror-ball shots, and everything inbetween. It can convert this into all sorts of weird and wonderful shapes, including nets, layer layouts for lego spheres, and projections. It's wonderful.
And all of that web-surfing shenanigans leads to this image, for now at least. Now that I know I have got the basics of the process, I'm pretty confident in using this technique for my Final Major Project at Uni, and am pretty psyched about it.
Hope you like it, if only for the brief feeling that you just ingested some sort of hardcore hallucinogens and got magically transported to my parent's study for a short while.
Related content
Comments: 72
hey looks very interesting.. a bit like my experiement 
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
how did you do that....?
nice picture!cool..
anot zehr
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
A whole new way to view one of my favorite rooms on the planet... I love it.
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
hehehe it is awesome, those leather chairs miss you and sam for sure.
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
Heehee - I hope so. I would hate to think it was unrequited love...
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
no, whatever it is, it's reciprocal.
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
nice - got ur link thru facebook - good shit mate
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
cheers, glad you like it!
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
you took too much maaaan, you took too much, too muuuuuuuch!!!
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
we can't stop here man, this is bat country.
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
I so wished I understood what you said (hie hie hie) all I know is that this is sooooooooo awesome.
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
This is so awesome dude! I'm really glad you explained how to do this. I think I would like to try it sometime.
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
A few jumps, but the lighting across the frame is great.
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
Nyrgh!! It messes with my miiiiinnnndd!
I love it!
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
Oh my god.
I love this piece. The angle. The depth. The perception. The general capture of everything. All awesome.
I actually shouted "Oh my god!" and gave a little shake of the head when I saw this because it blew my mind.
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
first time I heard of flexify ! I am on mac and seems very good tool for future post process ! Thanks for link.
I think I am going for a seitz pano camera with film. Is yours digital ?
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
yeah, i use a nikon d200 with a sigma 10-20mm lens, which works out at about 100-120º horizontal field of view, so i usually work with either 12 or 16 multi-row shots plus a zenith and nadir shot.
is that the 6x17 seitz? sounds like a good buy, but for me, a bit too dedicated for the price.
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
no no 617, too expensive ! I think the handhelo 220 roll film one (roundshot) with this weird stick, but still not sure to be honest.
Good quality but I just stopped my film processing expenses and this is auto camera, so I do not know if it fits to my dreams. a roundshot digital is priecy still to get it.
So why you take 12 or 16multi row please ? is it verticals only or horizontal ones ?
Also if you can explain what a zenith and nadir shots are (or lenses ? first time I hear the nadir).
Sounds you have great technique, and seemles joints !
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
they are vertical, the panoramic tripod head only accomodates vertical positioning.
zenith and nadir are the two photographs that "cap" the panorama, the zenith is a photograph vertically straight up, a nadir is the shot straight down.
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
sounds interesting, although I do not understand it clearly.
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
well,
a panoramic head is used to position the camera so that it rotates around the "nodal" point of the lens, thereby correcting parralax error (subject matter changing its position in relation to other subject matter due to rotation/movement of the field of view).
this principle is easily visualised by observing two objects (one nearby, one further away) with the left eye closed, and lining them up. now open the right eye and close the left eye. because the field of view has changed, the relationship between the two objects has changed. this is the principle of our three-dimensional spatial awareness, and is the reason animals have more than one eye.
once parallax error is negated, you can rotate the camera 360º horizontally, and, where permitting, 180º vertically. using this movement, you can capture any number of succesive frames, or a "row" of images. so a 360º "row" of images can be stitched together using a panoramic program to create one "strip" of 360º horizontally.
a "multi-row" panorama is a panorama created using multiple "rows", at varying vertical positions. using this, you can capture a wider strip of your environment. once this is acheived, all you need to do to create a true circular (360º horizontally, 180º vertically) image is to "cap" the multiple rows of images with a "zenith" shot (the upper "cap") and a "nadir" shot (the lower "cap") and add them to the image. this is how "virtual tours" can be created, something tourist information and estate agents websites use frequently.
if the visualisation of this is tricky, it is easier to visualise it thusly;
imagine the earth as a globe.
with the first row of images, i capture the southern hemisphere; australia, the indian ocean, soutern africa, the southern regions of the pacific, and south america.
with the second row of images, i capture the nothern hemisphere; asia, north america, the north pacific, europe, and north africa.
with these two sets of images, i have captured the majority of the globe, but i need the zenith image (the artic) and the nadir image (antartica) to complete the coverage.
with a true 360ºx180º panorama, the principle is the same, but instead of rotating around the outside of a globe to capture the images, i am rotating in the centre of a globe, or so the camera is led to believe.
i hope that helps to explain, and please forgive me if i have covered any areas you are already familiar with.
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
thank you very much for your precious tutorial please ! The cup issue is solved now. You must begin teaching, I understand you precisely !
I think I am not going to escape from investing to a head that can do verticals and also a s/w to do stitching and HDR.... This is the reason I wanted to go to seitz, but I will now buy a mark IIs canon body, so I think the pano head would be cheaper for me. I am not sure about the quality of stitching for doing a calendar image etc., but I believe I will finally make it !
Thank you very much for your replies to me. Appreciated !
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
wow. love the unique spiral effect. and as a side note what are u doing your dissertation on?
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
I'm looking at the concept of environmental interaction and the self within environment, focusing on influence and the translation of influence in aesthetics and intention. luckily i'm a design student so my portfolio work counts for half of my dissertation, meaning that i only need a word count of 4,500ish. thank god.
glad you like it!
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
wow congrats. how many years of study has it taken you to get to where u are?
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
Love the effect and the story and you've made a sale out of me (start charging commission?) , put my order in .
As far as pano tools goes , did you take a look at Autopano Pro ? there is a mac version , while I'm not doing this type of pano . I do mult layer panos ,might not be the same thing though.
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
the hdr support looks handy, although i'm fairly sure PTMac offers that too. Looking at Autopano Pro's interface, advanced options like control point editing and blending options, as well as zenith and nadir stitching aren't offered with Autopano. For plug-ins like Flexify, the ability to accurately render true 360ºx180º really helps you get the most out of the plug-in, which Autopano doesn't seem to support.
glad you like it- a quick search for "flexify" or "equirectangular" in the devart galleries pulls up some far more interesting works.
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
nice to read how you got here any your right. the image is as little trippy but something different
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
Very cool panorama you've made here
I use PTGui a lot, and loving it. What's the problem you're having with it? I'm not attacking, just curious
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
I find that PTMac offers a lot that PTGui doesn't, and also vice-versa. I like that you get high-res images to place nodes on, rather than the low-res images that PTGui offer. Having said that, PTGui's images load quicker, so I guess it's horses for courses. If you use a Mac, try downloading their free trial version and make the comparison for yourself. I spent more time working on PTMac than PTGui, so it's probably just familiarity, but I found the process to be more linear and comprehensive than PTGui.
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
Ok. We have lots of iMacs here at school, so I'll try it on one of those, cause they want some panorama software after I showed them the results I got
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
| Next =>