Last week, I visited Cancun with my in-laws and had a chance to see the ruins at Chichen Itza. I took a series of photos and made them into a panorama using Papervision3D (as done here by BlitzAgency for NBC's The Office and here by a company selling a product called Flash Panoramas). I made a little script that can handle both spherical and cubic images to see how both would look. Here's some previews of the two versions (The lines are there to show how the panorama is being constructed):
Spherical ![CropperCapture[45]](http://johndyer.name/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/CropperCapture[45]_2.jpg) |
Cubic ![CropperCapture[42]](http://johndyer.name/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/CropperCapture[42]_4.jpg) |
A cubsic panorama is composed of six images (top, bottom, left, right, front, back) while a spherical panorama is made using a single image which is stretched at the top and bottom (like a map of the world where Greenland and Antarctica are distorted). In general, it looks like the spherical version can generate the same level of detail with fewer polygons and thus more speed, but the cubic images can be a little smaller and are more easily edited.
Each of these is composed from approximately 45-50 images. I took around 15 in a circle at the horizon, 15 looking up about 45 degrees, and 15 looking down 45 degrees. Unfortunately, I didn't take enough pictures to complete the sky or the ground below, so you'll see some black spots if you "look" up or down. I used Hugin to stitch the images together, and it did a pretty good job considering I didn't have a tripod or wide angle lens to accurately take the pictures. (link: the best tutorial I have seen on image stitching)
3D Panoramas
Original Images
- Pyramid:
- Ball Court
The view page also has a list of commands (f=fullscreen) and links to the original files.
Update: I changed the navigation to be more like QTVR where you have to click to move, and there is an arrow cursor. Also, smoothing and precision are automatically applied when you stop moving.
awesome! I think the spherical one looks more realistic. You might want to add a mouse ‘dead-zone’ in the middle of the stage to avoid the image always moving.
Felix, thanks for your comment. I tried the dead zone, but it felt weird as well, so I changed it to work like QTVR where you have to click in order to get it to move. I think the interaction is better and doesn’t result in endless spinning.
This looks really good! Any plans of sharing the code?
que buen articulo, necesitamos muchos de estos, simplemente perfecto
Do you have source for this? It looks awesome and I would love to try and use it for some fun work!
God Bless,
Titus
Good post, liked the idea, keep up the good work!