Tutorial: Making stereoscopic (3d) images of your models

[Symrivven]

Introduction:
In my plog’s I’ve been using stereoscopic images for a while now because I believe they are a great way to show miniatures. Stereoscopic images are pairs of 2d images that when viewed correctly will result in one 3d image. By now I received several questions on how to view them and how to make them so it became time to make a short tutorial on how to make them and view them.

I’ll shortly describe how they work, and thus how you view them, then there will be a few examples and final the largest part will be a step by step guide on how to make your own stereoscopic images (which is really easy).


How does it work
Most people have two eyes which are placed slightly apart, both eyes observe 2 dimensional. Because the eyes are set slightly apart there will be subtle differences between what your left and right eye observe, these subtle differences are then used by your brain to recreate depth.

Now if you have two images that have been recorded slightly apart (as if by your two eyes). Then you can trick your brain into combining the two into one 3d image. This can be done either by relaxing your eyes, thereby focusing behind the plane where the actual images are, this is called parallel view. Or by crossing your eyes thus focusing in front of the plane, this is called cross-view.
See this picture:



As can be seen for parallel view the right image is for the right eye and the left image is for the left eye. With cross eye this is the other way around. This means that an image made for one type of viewing can’t be used for the other type. From here on I’ll focus on cross-eyed as I find that the easier method, keep in mind that the other method is just as viable just make sure the images are the other way around. (As usual more information on Wikipedia as well as the other methods of stereoscopy)


Cross-eyed viewing
Now some practise, gently cross your eyes till you are able to overlap the two 0’s. When that happens focus on the central of the now 3 0’s and you should be able to hold that image without effort (this works best with a black background).



..............................................0............0



If you succeed with this move on to some of the real images:

Here's a blood knight I made:


And for 40K I've got a Incubi for you:


Of course can find more of them in my Dark Eldar plog (and 1 more in my fantasy plog).

The next post will guide you step by step trough making your own stereoscopic images
 

[Symrivven]

How to make your own stereoscopic images.


1) First prepare everything the way you normally would for making images of your models. Just make sure you have a tripod or other object for stability, in this case I used the box of my airbrush. As can be seen, it doesn't have to be anything fancy.



2) Make a picture as normal, after that slide your camera a few centimetre to the side, keep it parallel to the previous position and make another photo. You should now have the two pictures needed for a stereoscopic image.
Extra: The distance you shift your camera to the side is dependent on several factors the most important one being the distance of the camera to the object. If this object is very close a few cm will do, if you try this with a building or mountain then you’re talking about several meters instead (some more technical information here).

3) Now post process the images like you normally do. For me this involves opening them in irfan view, sometimes cropping the image a bit. Then saving it for web, this will pop the riot plugin which I then use to reduce the image size to 600 by 450. (If you do extensive post processing like playing with colour balance etc. you might better to this after step 8/9)

4) You should end up with two images that are ready for the internet. Now put them side by side in different windows to see which image belongs where (more organized people might have recorded this at step 2, but for me that takes more time then moving the windows around). You can also skip this step and do it in the next program.



5) Use a program that can make one image file from several images (for example: Gimp is open source or Photoshop if you have it). In this example I use gimp because everyone can get it, though Photoshop works similar. Make a new blank file and or simplicities sake mike it the same height and twice the width of your original images (in this case 1200 by 450).

6) Now open the images as a new layer one after an other.



7) Use the move tool and the horizontal arrows to move the separate images to their respective sides. Generally you’ll end up with some overlap.



8) You have to make sure the space between the models is close enough so people can easily overlap the images by crossing their eyes, and wide enough so there is some “empty” space around the model. Two fingers on either side of the both models is a nice rule of thumb. This means you have some cropping to do.
First crop the centre of the top most image (only crop the active layer) so that both images have the two fingers of space between the model and the boundary to the other image. ( I didn't do this with the Incubi above, which makes the right side of that image a bit restless for the eye.)
Then make a final crop over all layers this should remove excess space on the outer sides of both images and cause the boundary between the image to be in the centre:





9) Save the end product in your favourite format (this generally involves merging the visible layers, choose yes). Your stereoscopic image is done.





Good luck with your own stereoscopic images and if you have any questions or if something isn’t clear let me know.

[Hendarion]

*Thumbs Up*

The thing I mostly seam to troubles with is the distance of the mini to the camera, the camera-side-shift-distance and the size of the pictures in Gimp. Either the 3D-effect is low or hard to achieve the 3D-look. I'll keep trying and good to see my camera-distance isn't that off. Gotta find out what else is then.

[Symrivven]

Distance shouldn't be a problem at all, just make a picture at the distance you normally use. The moving distance is indeed a bit tricky, the more you move the more pronounced the 3d effect will be but it will make it harder on the eye to combine the two images. Also keep in mind that for some models it can be tough to get a 3d effect going as some are actually rather 2d themselves (especially older models).
For infantry I move the camera about 4-5 cm while for vehicles Its more like 10 cm.

I wonder how that titan of yours is going to look in 3d. ^^

[AndrewGPaul]

After looking at your example images, Symrivven, I can see the Incubus, but not the othre two - the separation is too large for me.

[Symrivven]

That indeed is a problem, make the image to large and some people will get difficulties overlapping them, make the image to small and you loose to much detail.
As far as I know there is no way to allow manual scaling of images on these forms, then people could watch it at the size they prefer.
But there is a workaround. Put your browser in windowed mode (top right corner) then make the window smaller by dragging the left or right side towards the centre of your screen. The browser (at least mine: firefox) then scales the larger images down to about the size of the incubi image. Now you should be able to view them.
I'm not sure this will work in every browser and its bound to be to much work for most people, but if you like the images give it a try.

[Verm1s]

I tried this myself, once upon a time. People either laughed at me or went 'Buh...?' Finally good to know that I really didn't go temporarily insane for a day or two.

Good tutorial, and great results.

[Symrivven]

Its something new*, many people will reject new thing out of hand. And some actually have some difficulties viewing the images, crossing eyes (or relaxing them for parallel view) doesn't come natural for a lot of people. Still I think it adds enough, the 3d images really give a better idea of how the model looks in reality than the 2d images. And if you show both, no one miss out on anything.

Looking at the thread you linked that was indeed some time ago, in defence of the people that didn't really like it, the side of the dinosaur head is relatively flat, so 3d didn't add a whole lot of depth in those images. On the other hand their comments if you can call them that much are pretty lame and unconstructive.


*It was first discovered in the 1800's pre-dating photography. Though for war gaming its new indeed.

[dwez]

Its funny you mention this as I went to Warhammer World a few months back and after looking at some of my pics noticed that I'd take a couple of shots of the same thing just from different view points so I decided to see if I could make stereoscopic images of them, here are the best, considering they were never even intended to do this:





The rest will be on my blog eventually but I really like your Incubus, he's spot on!

[Symrivven]

Indeed that shows how easy it is.

[Crube]

Sounds excellent, however having a lazy eye, I can't process things like this. Can't even use normal 3d glasses

Wish I could....

[Symrivven]

Then probably wiggle stereoscopy is something for you. This is a gif consisting of two frames that are the same as for normal stereoscopy. But instead of being next to each other they appear after an other on the same spot. They are a bit more restless but don't require you to cross or relax your eyes. I don't have any warhammer examples but here are a few examples (at different speeds).

[kaimarion]

Coolest thing I've seen in ages!
A bit difficult to focus a first but I got there eventually.