Lscript for line blanking stereo animation required !

[Adrian@Stufish]

I've just posted this in a thread in PC LW, but I thought this area might get a pickup from you code-jockeys out there !

VREX are advertising shutter glasses at $35 which don't look too bad.
Their operation appears to be software-free and frame-rate -independant - they connect between the PC and the CRT with a 9pin through 'dongle'ish thing which apparently blanks alternate lines from the display while switching the L & R lenses. there is a 'hand control' which switches the system on and off and can 'reverse' the lense switching if the stereo is inverted.
you can piggy-back 6 pairs !
They advertise a MAX plugin.

Does anyone have a bright idea for interleaving LW's stereo output onto alternate scan lines?
Simplest would be a 'post' combine of image pairs.
Best would be a render plugin - like the anyaglyph combine.- Actually, thinking about it, one would then need to render only alternate lines for each of the stereo pair images, so rendering should be not much slower.
(would everything go horribly wrong if the viewing software resized the image ?)

Could be what we've all been waiting for.

[richpr]

Field rendering option? See here (http://www.newtek.com/freestuff/lwhelp/content/013_Camera/012_camera_blur.htm)

Is there a link for this toy? ;)

[Adrian@Stufish]

Unfortunately motion blur gives a minimum of 5 'camera positions' over the frame, where for stereo image we need 2 distinct camera positions (in this case one for each field) - and would want any motion blur to apply between frames between those separate positions.
So the simples route at the moment looks like finding a way to combine LWs L & R image output using some 3rd party or post process tweak.

Hold everything,

The bath just flooded,


I've got it !

If I create a still image called, say 'BlankingMask' in something like Photoshop, exact frame size - e.g 720x576 for PAL, consisting of alternate rows of black and white pixels, then all I have to do is render my L&R image sequences using LWs stereo camera settings, and then in an empty scene, in Image Editor load the 2 sequences and the blanking still image. Then in 'scene' /'backdrop'/'compositing' I put the L image as Background Image, the R image as foreground image, and the BlankingMask as the foreground Alpha.
As long as I render this scene with the camera resolution the same as the BlankingMask image, we should have Line Blanked Stereo.

Whee!

And while I'm about it, I think I can render the L&R image sequence at half the image height using a tall pixel
i.e. for PAL 720x288, pixel aspect ratio 0.5334.
LW will re-size them neatly for the combining run, and I won't have wasted render time on the initial run.

And of course, if I want to make lower resolution movie files from my original rendered L&R image sequences, I just have to make a different sized BlankingMask image. to suit the camera res.

I'm ordering the glasses now.


Lets Roll !

[richpr]

Keep us posted on your progress! ;)

[stib]

got FCP? I can write you an FXScript that will do it.

PS please post the link

[Danner]

The way I've made 3d animations for shutter glasses is to render the odd images first, start at 1 with 1 frame skip, then move the camera and render the even frames start at 0 with 1 fram skip.

Load the resulting images in Aura, with no fields and convert your project to fields, then save them out (the animation will be half the length and twice the speed), turn on the shutter glasses and play.. looks pretty darn good.