How to make a 3D image?

cormie

Hi, just wondering if there's any easy way to make a simple 3d image that could give the 3D effect from wearing glasses. The subject(s) of the image would be real objects. Is it something that will require hire or use of an extremely expensive piece of equipment, or something that just requires a bit of colour adjusting for the red/green glasses effect?

cormie

Found this, looks easy enough http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8TyzhHpF-UM&feature=player_embedded

Is this the same type of 3d used in the likes of Avatar and all the recent 3D films in the movies? I've never actually seen Avatar or any other recent 3D films, only film I saw was some palaeontology film in the iMax cinema about 15 years ago!

5uspect

Modern 3D uses polarisation to send different images to each eye, rather than different colours. Therefore you get full colour images but about a stop darker than normal.

You can also use a mirror trick to get the 3D effect.
http://nzphoto.tripod.com/sterea/stereomirror.htm#Text

cormie

Thanks for the info, so I'm guessing the polarisation is a lot harder to achieve? Is it the same end effect in terms of how 3d things appear and just the colour is better?

5uspect

More or less. You want each eye to see a different image and therefore fool the viewer into seeing depth. The polariser acts like a filter, just as the blue/red glasses only let blue or red light through each lens. However with the polariser the image from the screen has two polarisations instead of just two colours.

You can get polarised 3D monitors and TVs. A lot of modern games support 3D, even old fashioned red and blue. You may be able to force it with the nvidia driver on a normal monitor.

cormie

Yeah I remember my laptop came with the option to get a 3d GFX card.

So in basic terms, to get a 3d red/blue image you just take two photos a few inches apart, and change the colour settings on each and combine them, wear 3d glasses and you get the effect.

What's the process to make a polarised 3d image do you know? Does it rely on expensive equipment and a lengthy process?

5uspect

The amount of space you add must vary for different objects to give the illusion of depth.
You need something to polarise the images. So an expensive TV or projector and the software to tell it what to show. There is also active shutter technology, but not cheap.
You could rent a projector maybe.

cormie

Excuse my ignorance even further, but I never went to the cinema to see any of the latest (Avatar and on) 3D films and never watched anything from a 3D tv. Do you need to wear glasses watching these also and are they different than red and green glasses? Would you be able to watch avatar in 3d on a tv that's 30 years old as long as you had the glasses?

dyer

you would need glasses to view a 3d anaglyph composed of red/blue composite images.. there is another technique though http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBa-bCxsZDk

cormie

Thanks for the video, that's kind of like the magic eye images in a way? Changing your focus to get a 3d image? So avatar works in the same way as the video I linked to in post 2, in that it needs glasses, but is constructed in a better way, manipulating each object in each frame for a better effect, as opposed to just altering the colours of two frame captures and combining them?