Mark Iveson
Posts: 17
Location: Harrogate, United Kingdom
Registered: 13 Mar 2007
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Beginner needs help please
Posted: 18 Oct 2011 at 19:09 GMT
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Hi everyone. I'm very new to panoramic photography, especially 360 stuff and I'm not having much joy when importing my stitched panorama into Pano2VR. I'm importing a 2 row stitched 360 panorama and the default import settings in Pano2VR are Type=Auto but the flash output from it shows a real curved horizon. Am I doing something wrong here?
Thanks
Mark
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John Houghton
Posts: 3487
Location: Hitchin, United Kingdom
Registered: 17 Jan 2005
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Re: Beginner needs help please
Posted: 18 Oct 2011 at 19:46 GMT
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Output the full 360x180 equirectangular panorama image from your stitching program - i.e. not cropped to exclude blank areas at the top and bottom. You can modify the viewer parameters in Pano2VR so that the blank areas will not be accessible. The horizon should then be correctly rendered.
John
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iam360Texas
Posts: 298
Location: Fort Worth, Texas, United States
Registered: 12 Jul 2006
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Re: Beginner needs help please
Posted: 18 Oct 2011 at 19:49 GMT
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If you did not use a fisheye lens then probably your stitched image is a cylinder [similar to a label for a can]...
and when loading the image:
INPUT box Select Input button
TYPE choose CYLINDER
OUTPUT Flash and besure to [x] do not distort option
Try it.. and let us know how it works for you
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Mark Iveson
Posts: 17
Location: Harrogate, United Kingdom
Registered: 13 Mar 2007
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Re: Beginner needs help please
Posted: 18 Oct 2011 at 20:11 GMT
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Thank you both for your input. Is it best to output at full resolution in case I want to go full screen or are there any specific settings to use?
Thanks
Mark
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John Houghton
Posts: 3487
Location: Hitchin, United Kingdom
Registered: 17 Jan 2005
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Re: Beginner needs help please
Posted: 18 Oct 2011 at 20:37 GMT
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As a rough guide, input a 6000x3000 equirectangular image to Pano2VR, set the cube face size to be 1910 (pano width divided by pi), and quality = 80. Also, visit File->Settings and select lanczos3 as the interpolation filter. That should give you a good fullscreen display.
John
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Mark Iveson
Posts: 17
Location: Harrogate, United Kingdom
Registered: 13 Mar 2007
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Re: Beginner needs help please
Posted: 19 Oct 2011 at 7:23 GMT
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John
I tried your suggestions and everything seems fine now, apart from the fact it stretches the output at the top of the sky because I have no zenith shot. I've altered the viewing parameters so as not to show in final output.
One other question. Do I have to use a fisheye lens for full 360x180 spherical panos or can I use my 17mm (on a 1.6 crop sensor) which equals approx 28mm and just shoot more rows?
Also, are there any video tutorials for stitching the zenith and nadir shots in PTGui Pro?
Many thanks for your help on this
Mark
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mediavets
Posts: 1980
Location: Isleham, Cambs., United Kingdom
Registered: 8 Feb 2008
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Re: Beginner needs help please
Posted: 19 Oct 2011 at 8:08 GMT
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Mark Iveson said: One other question. Do I have to use a fisheye lens for full 360x180 spherical panos or can I use my 17mm (on a 1.6 crop sensor) which equals approx 28mm and just shoot more rows?
You can use your 17mm lens and shoot more images.
How many images? Well this database can offer a guide:
www.vrwave.com/panoramic-lens-database/
Andrew
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Mark Iveson
Posts: 17
Location: Harrogate, United Kingdom
Registered: 13 Mar 2007
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Re: Beginner needs help please
Posted: 19 Oct 2011 at 10:43 GMT
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Thank you Andrew, that's very helpful. I take it the N & Z indicate Nadir & Zenith shots?
Now I just need to find out how to stitch the Nadir & Zenith shots in PTGui.
Mark
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John Houghton
Posts: 3487
Location: Hitchin, United Kingdom
Registered: 17 Jan 2005
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Re: Beginner needs help please
Posted: 19 Oct 2011 at 11:48 GMT
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Mark Iveson said: ... everything seems fine now, apart from the fact it stretches the output at the top of the sky because I have no zenith shot.
That's slightly worrying - there should be no stretching if you have created a full 3660x180 image. You should simply have blank space at the zenith with a sharp edge where the top row finishes.
There is no special stitching action required for a zenith shot provided that there are matching features to be found for control points between it and at least one other image. Likewise for nadir shots taken with the camera tilted down on the panohead. A shot of the nadir area with the tripod shifted out of the way is a different matter. You can then make use of the viewpoint correction feature, as described in these tutorials:
www.ptgui.com/examples/vptutorial.html
www.johnhpanos.com/ptgvpt.htm
John
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Mark Iveson
Posts: 17
Location: Harrogate, United Kingdom
Registered: 13 Mar 2007
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Re: Beginner needs help please
Posted: 19 Oct 2011 at 18:14 GMT
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John
What should the resolution be if I want to be able to zoom in quite a way without pixelation? I've just been experimenting with Pano2VR and imported quite a large JPEG and output a flash file with the default settings and the file size is 65MB. Obviously, this enables me to zoom in to even the smallest detail but I don't think it will load very quickly.
Mark
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John Houghton
Posts: 3487
Location: Hitchin, United Kingdom
Registered: 17 Jan 2005
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Re: Beginner needs help please
Posted: 19 Oct 2011 at 19:30 GMT
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Mark, If you use the settings I already suggested, the flash file will be around 3MB. If you want to retain the full resolution captured in the camera images, then you can use the multi-resolution option in Pano2VR, in which tiles of varying sizes are loaded on demand only when needed. You can find a video tutorial via Help->Video Tutorials.
John
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Mark Iveson
Posts: 17
Location: Harrogate, United Kingdom
Registered: 13 Mar 2007
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Re: Beginner needs help please
Posted: 21 Oct 2011 at 10:08 GMT
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Thanks John, I'm starting to get the hang of it now.
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