Stereoscopic 3D Output from an OpenGL Environment
Hello forums!
I have a hypothetical/historical question about outputting stereoscopic 3D video in Max. Has anyone ever done this before? Would it be possible?
I was thinking of ways to place two cameras, lined up in parallel, a small distance apart. Then sequencing them to alternate for the left and right eyes (using DLP Link, side-by-side projectors).
There's obviously a lot to how 3D technology works and I have a rudimentary understanding of it, but I wanted to see if this would be a possibility to output 3D video directly from Max.
Thanks!
After learning more about it, I guess my question is more, "While using two cameras in an OpenGL environment, could you output a side-by-side video ready to be sent to the projector?" I think it would actually work, but if I don't get an answer here I'll just have to try it out and see.
Here you go - a few years old, but I just tested it & it all still works (scroll down for the final version):
Thank you pseudostereo! I'm actually looking for tips on outputting side-by-side format 3D for a DLP Link projector. I did find a package called Cosm, which can be found here. I think I'll be able to see what they did and replicate it. Thank you for that thread, though! There's a lot of really useful information in there that I could use in the future.
As far as I am concerned, Cosmos is MAx 6 only. That's a problem if you want to work with the cool 3d features in Max 7. That was my case, actually. So far I couldn't find anything similar to deal with 3d DLP link projector and max.
A demo project with camera control by headtracking etc. is here (or the variant with head position tracking by kinect here). It has only 1 camera and uses the same picture side by side, but it would simple to add the second camera in eye distance. The first version of the patcher had a second camera, but I didn't see much difference with VR, so I kicked it out to improve performance.
Though I'm not sure if that helps you - I don't know enought about the implications of the DPL 3d projectors. If you'd like to explain that a little more ?
That would be unfortunate if it was Max 6 only. I'll test it out tonight when I have some time and let you know what I find. I'm in contact with Dr. Kuchera-Morin, who is a heavy user of Cosm from the AlloSphere project.
Constanze: You seem to know enough to get the gist of what I'm trying. Head tracking is definitely on the to-do list as well so I appreciate the links! Basically, I need to be able to output SBS video that can be recognized by the projector for the overlaying conversion it does. When the DLP Link projector receives a signal with SBS video, it automatically overlays one on top of the other (and does all the crazy stuff with syncing shutters on the glasses for each L/R eye). I haven't tried much yet since I just recently got the projectors and have been doing other tests, but I'll keep the thread updated this week as I test these suggestions.
sounds like a cool project ... it would be interesting to hear more about your solution.
Is this thread still active?!
@Tellus Scopic: I am also interested in your findings but I guess you did not proceed the testing?