Apophysis 3D Revealed

Stereoscopic Camera Controls

On the one hand, it’s pretty simple, but there are so many things about Apo 3D that can inadvertently make it nearly impossible to correctly align the camera for stereo when you’re ready for it, so it’s necessary to have a Stereo-Safe procedure to follow.

Capturing stereo easily involves a carefully choreographed routine in how you manipulate the flame during the design phase, so that when you have what you want, you can easily shift the camera side to side for stereo. Then make generous use of ’screen capture’ in some other program from the preview windows so you can view the stereo results in a graphics program before committing Apo 3D to an actual rendering process.

Here are the nitty-gritty basic rules:

• Reserve Pitch and Yaw for camera manipulation and don’t use them for exploring and designing. Use my Rotate Pitch Script for ease in designing, but keep in mind that you need to set Pitch=90, then accomplish any needed rotations with other controls before you start saving parameters for your stereo pair.
• Stay away from the ‘Rotation’ control on the ‘Adjust’ panel unless you rotate ONLY to 90 degree intervals. Even then, every time you use that control, it changes which other controls are needed to provide a stereo-effective side-to-side shift. It’s easiest when Rotation=0.
• Keep ‘Perspective’ at 0, because other values cause image features to shift up and down slightly which ruins or uncomfortably distorts the homologous (the ’same’ image feature) details between an image pair.
• Instead, use the rotate parameters in the Variations list to rotate the flame. This involves activating FX in the Transform Editor then making changes in one or more of pre/post_rotate_x or y variations.
• You can also use the ‘Triangle’ controls in the Transform Editor to cause precise rotations.

The Major Stereoscopic Key!!!

When you’re done with this, your Pitch and Yaw are still available for stereoscopic positioning of the camera view!

If you’re designing from the top down perspective, ie: Pitch=0, it’s difficult to get a stereo directed camera shift. So, change the Pitch to 90. Then if you like and want the top down view, get it back by using FX and post_rotate in the variations.

Example for obtaining a top down view after making Pitch=90

Start with your Yaw=0, then in the Transform Editor make post_rotate_x=1. If your Yaw is something else, you have to use some value for the rotate y or a combination of x and y. That gets complicated…

I’m working on a script to handle these details.

So, you’ve designed a flame, set your Pitch=90 and gotten the desired view with other rotation controls. The stereo pair is then found by adjusting the Yaw control. You can, in this mode, spin the flame completely around without losing accurate stereo-compatible views.

Saving your stereo pair parameters

1. Find a good view and save the parameters in a new FLAME file: “goodflame01.flame”
2. Name the parameters for this first view: “somename_01_a”
3. Change the Yaw by adding or subtracting between 4 and 6 degrees from your starting Yaw value, whatever it is. (If the starting Yaw=25.25 then your new setting might be Yaw=29.25 or 21.25)
4. Save the changed parameters in goodflame01.flame under a new name, “somename_01_b”

View Tweaking

Now click each saved set and let the preview render and make a screen capture from each saved
parameter file. Check it for stereo quality in your graphics program.

Usually 4 to 6 degrees of difference for a stereo pair works right. But if your scale value is small you might need a larger stereo angle. If your scale is larger you might need much less stereo angle. You can click back and forth between two saved sets and notice how much shift takes place. You want some shift but not too much…

If your captured stereo pair doesn’t work well, you need to go back and change something. If the depth is too much, as in too much distance from near to far features, then use less view angle difference. If it’s too flat, either your flame doesn’t have much shape, or you need more view angle difference. When you make changes, SAVE THEM! Then do more screen captures.

When you’re happy with tested results, render the flames making sure that they render to the same image height and width and render qualities.

This viewing and testing phase will help you identify which image is the right eye view and which is the left eye view. When that is positively known, you can change the saved parameter names to reflect that knowledge.