Stereoscopic & Panoramic for VR - Best 3d Program?
Granville
Posts: 697
Does anyone know the best program to use to render stereoscopic and 360 degree ? Iclone can do 360 or stereoscopic, just not both at the same time. MCasual's script will render in 360, but not necessarily in stereoscopic.
We just got a pair of oculus rift's for Christmas. Viewing Coco VR what such an amazing experience, that I realised it would be great to do that with even static Daz renders. Honestly looking at video previews of vr renders don't even come close to the actual experience in the Headset. There was a stone fence in Coco that was so real that I tried to sit on it...except it wasn't there in the real world.
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There are only two contenders I know of Unity 3D & UE4. Unity 3D is targetable to more platforms than UE4 though I imagine UE4 will catch up someday to Unity 3D. They both are free. In Unity there are several VR/AR assets in their asset store and some free to help get the job done for you. Also don't forget Octane Renderer is now an offical and free part of Unity 3D!
If you are just asking about outputting the needed images then Octane Render can do this. You have two different options a 360 image, or a stereo image (i guess technically both at same time can be done but I never did this myself)
I've done several of these in the last few years, mostly still images. You can get the images into Unity or Unreal if you want to have a 360 view. There are a few apps I have seen for this too but mostly on the phone or soemthing that requires an online account. So I gave up on the 360 view thing.
I've set up Big screen beta and the default windows picture viewer into my prefered stereo image viewer.
Seeing the images in "3d" is really great even if they are just stills. lots of fun IMO.
I only wish there was an easier way to share the stereo images, an easier way for users to view them. I haven't found a software that I can suggest people use to easily load up a picture and see it properly. Thats the only reason I haven't done more images that way. No way to share, so takes away the steam. My Big screen + windows picture viewer approach works well for me, but its kind of a hack and I couldn't share my results with this method since the end user would have a clunky experience. The visuals are fine, its more of the process of setting up the software, and the fact this method the user can see the stereo images in the non VR format and they looks squashed in a normal picture viewer. So not very nice looking package even though the images look need in the headset.
If anyone knows of software to view stereo images (that isn't based on an online account) please share it here.
The octane render for unity thing is kind of a joke. I don't think its useful for most people. It lets you render videos with octane render quality inside of unity. so you can have nice looking cutscenes...
sry for all the edits should be done now.Oh and lastly, I am not implying Octane is the BEST for this goal. But I figured I would mention it does in fact do this. Blender apparently supports stereo rendering but I have used Blender only about 10 hours total over the last 10 or so years. But at least blender is free. So for other folks maybe thats a place to start experimenting.
I have started playing around with importing daz models into unreal. It's really awesome. Unreal has an option where you can build in vr. So you can move models around and do almost everything with the touch controllers. It's not still imsges, though you can use the Nvidia Ansel plug in to take 360 steroscopic.images and video in unreal
Depending on goals there are advantages to both methods. I've done both.
Prerendered images or video can use whatever render solution you want, be as high poly as you want, and will look absolutely amazing. Basically you can take for fave render, make it stereo with little work and view it with 3D depth. Great reward for little work.
Realtime assets need to use material and lighting settings from your choice software. So they won't look like renders you normally make Both Unreal and Unity have great rendering tools but they do take time to learn. Also you need to use lower resolution assets for it to run smoothly. Then comes animation...which can totally break the experience. I've had some success with some really good looking simple scenes in both engines, but Unreals rendering is a tad better. For unity i liked the skyshop rendering solution. But its still quirky and strange stuff can happen. Disclaimer: I've been using unity on and off a few years, but unreal engine since the early 2000.
If you want people to have control over their view of the art, or make it interactive then of course realtime is the way to go.
I think for new folks getitng into it, its going to be easier to do prerendered images. The results can be amazing and they have less to learn. Less technical stuff to overcome.
For Windows, StereoPhoto Maker doesn't just make stereo photos, it views them. http://stereo.jpn.org/eng/stphmkr/index.html
thanks, I just happened to find that one myself. This seems like a useful tool with all its features and history. But it doesn't seem to work for me or maybe with my DK2. I try to output to the HMD and steam VR loads, which could be part of the problem. But I never get anything on the screen itself. *sob*
There's a reason for that. To render 360 simply takes a 360 degree camera, or a fairly simple merging of renders from less than 360 degree cameras (via a "panoramic stitching" program like Hugin.
To render stereo requires rendering from human eye positions: either two cameras spaced an interocular distance apart, or two render passes moving a single camera. This works tolerably well for fields of view up to about 90 degrees, ±45 degrees from center. Past that, and the "eyes" are in line with each other more than they're side by side. Imagine you're standing in a real scene of some sort (like you're probably doing right now) and you look left or right a bit by moving your eyes, but not turning your head.
That's "casual". If the scene were more interesting, you'd turn your head or body. For rendering, you'd need to do a new render with a new pair of cameras at a different pair of viewpoints, corresponding to how much you've turned your hear. That's why VR footage is shot with weird contraptions with multiple pairs of cameras, like the 16 cameras in a Google Jump. The combining software puts it together into a 360 view with the right blend of cameras at every angle. Unfortunately, this isn't always seamless. It improves with the number of cameras.
And that's where it all falls apart for rendering. You could set 16 cameras in the Google Jump configuration, do those 16 renders, and use the Jump software to combine the images into one merged 360. It's easier to see stitching flaws in CGI scenes than real scenes (which have more "clutter" to hide the joins) so even more cameras are needed to do this well in CGI. I've seen it done with 360 camera pairs, in 1 degree increments. The more pairs, the easier the stitching. At 1 degree increments, it's really just a matter of merging slices.
Render is going to take a while, though. ;)
thats all a good point wiz, didn't think about that, but it all makes sense.
Wow...thanks for all the amazing ideas. I will try them all out.
To view simple stereo images, use any image viewer and go full screen so that the image fills the screen. Then in VirtualDesktop's main screen, set the mode of the image (either SBS, half SBS or Over/Under). This is the same way you watch 3D movies. VirtualDesktop can also view 360 images, but not stereo 360 images. I haven't found anything that can view stereo 360 images. I usually convert those to a single frame video which VirtualDesktop CAN view. Not sure why they didn't add the ability to view stereo 360 when you can view stereo 360 (or 180) videos.
If you have a headset, I HIGHLY recommend VirtualDesktop. It's a required app IMO.
BTW, I've used two views in DAZ Studio and set half SBS on VirtualDesktop to use DAZ Studio in full 3D with a headset. The only annoying part is accessing the panes and menus.
As for rendering, DAZ Studio has a spherical camera. You can even set a stereo offset on it for rendering stereo 360. I wish you could render 180 images as well. But oh well. I just crop them.
Problem is VirtualDesktop is no longer free last I checked. WHat a lot of people use instead now is BigScreen Beta, which has the SBS and half SBS or Over/Under options as well.
@AlienRenders thanks for saying daz has a 360 lens now. I didn't realized it has changed. years ago it wasn't an option. after a quick look i found where it is now. Its greyed out for me, I guess because I don't use iRay. Sad times. Maybe I'll figure it out one day.
Isn't it mcasual that has a script to render the two images needed for a stereoscopic image? Maybe I'm remembering incorrectly. I don't do virtual stereoscope when I do it. I create the little Victorian era style cards, so only need a left eye and right eye image.
Does anyone know where there is documentation on Daz's spherical camera?
BTW OToy is up to some cutting edge stuff. I hadn't looked at them since Octane was a baby app. They are dead legit now. If Iray weren't so easy to use, I would have moved on to them.
Paris
Look at first post here