How to make IRender nXt stereo images

For those of you owning a 3D monitor, here's a cool tip for viewing your models in "real" 3D. If you don't have a 3D monitor, cheer up, because this will also work with those red/green anaglyph glasses (just not quite as nicely).

Download RunnerPack's stereo_pan.rb plugin (free) over at SketchUcation.com's forum. It's a simple, but very useful, plugin which moves the camera sideways (left or right) about 2.5 inches (the distance between your eyes).

Find a nice view (preferably with some objects in front of other objects for a nice 3D effect) in your model and render it. This will be the scene as seen from your left eye. Save the image, e.g. as render_left.png.

Select the "Move right" menu item in SketchUp's Camera menu to move the camera to your "right eye". Render the new scene and save the image as render_right.png.

Download StereoPhotoMaker (free) and run it (no need to install anything, just unpack the zip file and start the .exe file).

Import the two images by selecting the File->Open Left/Right Images... menu item.

Make sure your images have been properly selected as left/right image by looking in the title bar. It should say "Left Image(render_left.png) Right Image(render_right.png). If it doesn't, swap the images around with the "Swap Left/Right" menu item in the View menu.

Now you can view the image in 3D directly in StereoPhotoMaker (Stereo->Page Flip for 3D Shutter Glasses (you might need to select your type of 3D hardware in the Page-flip Setup first)), or export the file as e.g. a .MPO file for viewing in your favourite stereo image viewer.

If the 3D effect seems "backwards", swap the left and right image and try again.

If you use anaglyph glasses, play around with the Anaglyph menus in the Stereo menu.

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Permalink Reply by stewed on March 9, 2011 at 10:49am

Oh, ok. My apologies.

Not sure what you mean by "announcement" though. I use this method to make my IRender nXt rendered images to "come more to life" and thought others would be interested.

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Permalink Reply by Boothy on March 9, 2011 at 2:20pm

Hmmm

I do not really see whats wrong with relevance of this post either - I would have been interested in seeing some 3D Nxt renders posted on the forum and would not of known about it unless the above was posted. I do not think we should assume everyone visits all the associated forums - such a moderating philosophy could mean that some of us miss out on some good content.Certainly cannot see why it should not be in the `corner bar` at least

Stewed Anyway I was certainly interested - thanks for the (ex) post

Boothy

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Permalink Reply by Render Plus on March 10, 2011 at 7:09am

Sorry for the misunderstanding

I will replace the original posting.

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Permalink Reply by Boothy on March 10, 2011 at 2:54pm

Hey Stewed

This stereo image lark is cool - sample below was produced for red (left) right (cyan) glasses - I have not really got a commercial application for it but its fun anyway -If anyone has some glasses the stereo effect works well I must try it on my sons 3d laptop when I have a minute

Thanks for the heads up

Boothy

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Permalink Reply by stewed on March 11, 2011 at 8:45am

Glad you liked it, Boothy!

You know what would be cool? If we could talk Al and Rich into putting a "Make stereo image" checkbox next to the "Make panoramic image" checkbox (I suppose they would have to be radio boxes though). Such an option could have the rendering engine render the current view, then move the camera 2.5" to the side and then render that view as well (side by side in the same window/image). This image, containing both the left and the right eye views, can then be opened in a third party tool (e.g. StereoPhotoMaker) for editing or viewing.

And what would be really, really cool would be if that checkbox could also affect the animation so that we would get one animation (a video or a series of images) for the left eye and one for the right eye. There are free tools to create stereo videos too (e.g. StereoMovieMaker).

Pleeeeeease, Al... :-)

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Permalink Reply by Boothy on March 11, 2011 at 9:46am

I do not think offsetting the view would stretch them - I really cannot see any commercial application for this in design presentation terms -likewise I would personally have little use for a `stereo` animation - I do think it is a lot of fun though.

If there was any `spare` development time on the animator I would prefer to see the vsiual observer integrated so we could use plugins like proper animation.I must admit this is well down my wishlist though - I really only use animator to batch render images.

Nothing to do with Irender but it would be useful if the stereo_pan.rb worked with 2 point perspective also.

Thanks

Boothy