QTVR Object Helper script

QTVR Object Helper script

Jake said:
Oh Martin, now that you have conquered the panning VRs, could you whip up a script for Object VRs too? :D

Now that the animation feature is there and working nicely (Thks Martin), this script is maybe not as important as before and coming too late. On the other hand, at this time, it's difficult to do the same thing with the animation feature. Maybe Martin could add this later ... :cool:
Anyhow, I thought this could help in some situations. Who's is going to get the first QTVR Object in the gallery ?

A couple of points :
- be nice with bugs (if any). I'm not a programmer but I had fun doing this ! :wink:
- Please read the "Readme First" file. This should get you going in minutes
- have fun but be careful with the number of images or all rendering settings as this script will really keep your computer busy if you want !
- I'll be happy to answer questions.

Thks for letting us know what you can come up with.

François
 

Attachments

  • qtvr_object_helper_121.zip
    95.4 KB · Views: 509
Re: QTVR Object Helper script

Francois said:
Anyhow, I thought this could help in some situations. Who's is going to get the first QTVR Object in the gallery ?

Hi,
you are right without your script it would be indeed very tricky to make a QTVR object movie. So thank you very much for simplifying that process.

And I'm also eagerly waiting for a nice QTVR object to appear. :p

By,
Martin
 
So here's the Falling Water model I got from Jeff Jacobs. I used the new helper and made the object in VR Worx. No materials used except the water. I think it looks quite nice. ;-)
Falling water VR

Regards,
Peter
 
Hi peer,
that is really great. :D I'm still wondering that it is possible to create QTVR Objects with Cheetah3D.

Think it took you quite some time to render it. How many images does this movie have?
But I have some plans to accelerate radisosity renderings of static objects.

By,
Martin
 
There are 269 images in this movie. All rendered at 200x200. With HDRI and radiosity on+direct light with shadows. The water texture is just an reflecive map with waterbump. On the dual G5 this rendered quite fast. Can't remember exact times. I will render it tomorrow again so I can give you exact seconds. :)

Regards,
Peter
 
peer said:
I used the new helper and made the object in VR Worx.

Hi peer,
Glad I could help you on this. Interesting to see Fallingwater like this.

Martin said:
I'm still wondering that it is possible to create QTVR Objects with Cheetah3D.

Hi Martin,
Can you please explain ? Thank you

Here is another contribution for a QTVR object and a Cubic QTVR panorama.

http://fl73.online.fr

Rendering is not perfect but the goal was really to create a QTVR object.
48 images (300*300) with HRDI and radiosity. That took several hours to render but I think this shows that the number of images doesn't have to be large unless a smooth movement is desired.

The Cubic QTVR panorama is just there to compare with the object

François
 
Nice swimmingpool. Although I don't want to swim with that darkening sky, haha :p What QTVR object making program did you use? I can't seem to download Apple's own plugin for this. If it would be possible with QT Pro maybe it's possible to run it automatically after rendering or something. I think Cinema4d and Vectorworks can automatically create these objects. That would be great!! Thanks for the plugin!

Regards,
Peter
 
peer said:
Nice swimmingpool. Although I don't want to swim with that darkening sky, haha :p What QTVR object making program did you use? I can't seem to download Apple's own plugin for this. If it would be possible with QT Pro maybe it's possible to run it automatically after rendering or something. I think Cinema4d and Vectorworks can automatically create these objects. That would be great!! Thanks for the plugin!

Regards,
Peter

Peter,
Thanks for your comments. I think I still have a lot of work to do to get to the same kind of results I can see around the Web in terms of image quality.
As I don't have the fancy/expensive solutions, I used QT Pro and QTVREdit Object. And I am also always trying to find freeware or shareware solutions to allow the max. number of people to participate.

François
 
Francois, is QTVREdit Object still available? I tried to download it from Apple but could not find it. Maybe it's still available through the peer-to-peer networks. The search continues :)

Regards,
Peter
 
Francois, Yes I tried that link, but it takes a long time to start up or doesn't exist or something. I can't get it to download. Do you have the file somewhere :-D

Regards,
Peter
 
I don't understand as I just tried again from the above link and it's working. Anyway, here it is
 

Attachments

  • qtvredit_object.sit.hqx_423.zip
    170.2 KB · Views: 430
I'm trying to generate images to create an Object Movie.

I tried this script but get the following error:


line: 47
TypeError: doc.getActiveCamera is not a function


From the posts here, it seems this script did at one time work.

Is there an updated script, or can anyone give guidance on how to go about creating the images for an Object Movie in Cheetah 3d?

Thanks!
 
Fundamentally, an object movie is a series of rotations* together with a few magic values set in the movie file. Apple's free tools work fine, but they are all Classic apps (no-one cares about QTVR any more, it seems).

It goes something like this (in pseudo code):

Code:
for latitude = 85 down to -85 step 10
  for longitude = -175 to 175 step 10
   take a picture looking towards the origin
  next
next

This would give you an "all round" view in 10 degree increments, but in many cases only views from a restricted set of angles are used. Similarly you can vary the increments.

It's perfectly easy to set up a scene in C3D to output these images without any scripting (a nice script would make it more flexible, though).

Assuming you render a set of images like this, you now have the problem of turning it into a QTVR... if you're using Leopard you're pretty much out of luck :-/

Here's a QTVR object movie I made 15 years ago :)

http://loewald.com/gallery/microscope.html

We actually shelled out a ridiculous amount of money for Apple's QTVR Authoring Tools way back when... never really came up with a use for it. It wasn't even useful for producing games like MYST (which is probably what it was designed for) because it was horribly difficult to embed interactivity in the scenes and impossible to make objects in scenes interactive or seamlessly "dissolve" between VR and "flat" videos.
 
Last edited:
I'm just stumbling by this thread and want to add:
-You can still find an OS X compiled version (ppC though but ok leopard with roseta) to make QTVR from statics images. It's named MakeCubic. It's packed in an archive, with a lot of other legacy products somewhere on Apple developers site. Google for it and if you don't find it I'll try to digg it.
- i do not remember the details but I did successfully use this script a couple of month ago to generate such images. Just be sure to read the comments in the script and set the active camera accordingly.
 
Cubic VRs are panoramas (skyboxes actually) not objects -- different thing.

QTVR supports three different kinds of thing:
panoramas (which use a 360° panorama either rendered or "stitched" together from a series of still images taken very carefully using a wide angle lens)
cubic panoramas (which use 6 "skybox" images)
objects (which use one or more "rings" of images taken from orbiting the image at different angles).
 
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