Start 3D Blog

Processing Improvements

2011-06-28T02:46:00.000-07:00

We keep tweaking the software to try to improve the results. Although it's far from perfect, the latest version has removed a lot of the more serious problems. You can always switch to the latest version by clicking on the highest version number under your image (only appears when you're logged on and looking at your own photo/album).

If you're pleased with your web preview, why not try our lenticular prints - they are quite amazing objects to hold in your hands.

We are experimenting with the much-requested larger image sizes. What do you think of this?

Multi-View and Lenticular Prints

2010-04-29T06:55:00.000-07:00

Start 3D technology is all about converting 2-view 3D, to multi-view 3D. The Piku-Piku view is our way of presenting that result on a flat screen, and we think it's very effective. But it's not the only way you can see it.

One of the reasons multi-view 3D is so great, is because of lenticular prints. These are true 3D photographs, which use a special lens to show different views to each of your eyes. They are 3D without glasses. And, although you can make a lenticular print from just two views, multi-view lenticular prints are more comfortable to view, can be viewed by multiple people simultaneously, and the 3D effect is enhanced, not lost, as you move your head. It's like holding a piece of magic in your hands.

Until now, the only way to make multi-view lenticulars was to capture more views (perfectly aligned), or to have an artist do the conversion work by hand. So, our big news is that we've just started selling multi-view lenticular prints - and this is all you have to do to get them:

Make sure your album allows printing. When viewing the album, click the 'Edit album properties' button to see/change the setting.
View the photo you want to buy, and make sure you're happy with the results (any glitches you see will also be in the print).
Click the 'Add to cart' button.
Click on your cart icon in the top-right, set your currency and shipping zone (which must match your delivery address) and choose the quantity and type of print.
Click on 'Proceed to checkout' and pay on the PayPal secure site.

We have two excellent lenticular print suppliers - In-Depth and Softmotion. The file we provide them is the same, so the difference between them is in their slightly different printing processes, choice of lenses, and prices. Softmotion is offering thin and thick lenses at 8"x6". The thin lens has a higher resolution, while the thick lens has more depth. The In-Depth 7"x5" is in between these two. Both Softmotion and In-Depth are offering 10"x8"s.

If you already do your own lenticular printing, and all you want is the hi-res file, you can buy that by selecting 'Downloadable file only' in your cart.

Please watch our video on youtube to see an example of what the print looks like.

New languages

2010-04-29T06:15:00.001-07:00

Start 3D is now available in Portuguese, Italian, Chinese and Russian. This brings the total number of languages to 11. These are mostly generated by automatic translation, and I know they contain many mistakes. Please help the site work better in your language by suggesting better translations where you can.

Website Localization

2010-02-01T08:21:00.000-08:00

Start 3D, although in its early days, has attracted a multilingual community. To reflect this, the site is now available in English, Japanese, German, French, Dutch, Polish and Spanish. The text is mostly automatically translated by Google Translate; but we hope that the community will quickly help us to fix it up.

If you want to help us translate for your language, please send us an email.

Embedded Piku-Piku

2010-01-04T02:30:00.000-08:00

How to embed a Piku-Piku in a blog.


<div id="vS7795581878756314" style="position:relative; overflow:hidden;"><a href="http://www.start3d.com/2356738001/0001/7795581878756314"><img id="iS7795581878756314" style="position:absolute;padding:0px;" src="http://www.start3d.com/uploads/2356738001/7795581878756314_composite.jpg?v=2" 
onload="function Piku(t,n){var T=t,N=n,I=document.getElementById('i'+T),V=document.getElementById('v'+T).style,W=I.clientWidth/N,D=0,X=0,P='px';this.F=function(){X=Math.min(Math.max(X+D,0),N-1);D=(!X?1:X==N-1?-1:D);I.style.left=-W*(.0625+X)+P;setTimeout(T+'.F();',33*(5-X*(N-1-X)/N));};V.width=W*.875+P;V.height=I.clientHeight+P;this.F();};
S7795581878756314 = new Piku('S7795581878756314',11);"
/></a></div>

The colored text shows the bits you should replace: the link and the image (obtained from the photo view), and the name of the global variable S7795581878756314, which should be unique on the page, start with a letter and contain only letters and numbers. The number 11 at the end indicates the number of views in the Piku-Piku, which is 11 in the current version.

How to embed a Piku-Piku thumbnail.

Here, the global variable is S7795581878756314T, with a T added so that it doesn't interfere with the one above. The image changed to http://www.start3d.com/uploads/2356738001/7795581878756314_composite_thumb.jpg?v=2. Note that the number at the end is 6 for a thumbnail.

(This post was updated with simpler code.)
(This post was updated with a bug fix for Safari on 18 Jan.)

Comments and Ratings

2009-12-23T13:05:00.000-08:00

We've been hard at work adding new features to Start 3D. Now you can give feedback on photographs by leaving comments, or by rating the picture 1-5 stars. You need to be signed in to leave a comment or to rate a picture.

We hope you enjoy the new features.

3D My Christmas Tree

2009-12-23T09:51:00.000-08:00

We want you to try 3D photography this Christmas, by sharing a 3D picture of your Christmas tree with your family and friends and the rest of the world. All you need to do is take two pictures of your tree, two inches apart (as if the cameras were your eyes). Upload the pictures to start3d.com and be amazed by the 3D results.

To put your tree in the tree collection, click on the Christmas Tree icon in the photo view. Users can rate the submissions by clicking on the voting stars underneath each photo - and the top ranked tree appears on the front page.

Getting started in 3D is easy.

The Depth Slider

2009-12-18T05:52:00.001-08:00

One of the more advanced features of the Piku-Piku viewer is the ability to dynamically control the perceived depth.

When the Piku-Piku is viewed in its compact form, with a single image, all of the images needed to perceive stereo depth are presented, but at the same time to both eyes. Some people perceive a Pulfrich-like effect, which causes them to experience depth when viewing in this mode.

When you view the Piku-Piku binocularly, your two eyes see two different views. In this view, you can control the interocular separation, which directly determines the amount of depth you perceive. You can dynamically exchange one dimension of space for time.

In today's update, the sliders are shown doubled in the parallel and cross-eye views. You should be able to use them whilst viewing the Piku-Piku. If you have a viewer, or know how to freeview, try it out.

Faces are particularly interesting to look at. Photographers know how the face is flattened by the camera, but you can see the effect for yourself as you change from 3D to 2D.

New York Stereoscopic Society

2009-12-16T16:45:00.000-08:00

The NY Stereoscopic Society blogged about us. Read it here.

What's this all about?

2009-12-15T05:59:00.000-08:00

If you're reading this thinking, "what is 3D photography anyway?" then you've absolutely come to the right place. This site is all about helping you make your own 3D photographs, and also share them with your family and friends. If you can take a photograph, then now you can take a 3D photograph. That is what Start 3D is all about.

A 3D photograph is a photograph that also shows you depth. Often, you need special glasses or equipment to see it. You may know the old red and blue glasses, or the yellow and blue filter of ColorCode, or polarized glasses like the RealD glasses at the cinema. If you are of the right age, you might know View-Master. Start 3D introduces a brand new way to experience 3D photos, called Piku-Piku (which approximately means "twitching"). A Piku-Piku is an animation that uses time to reveal the third dimension of the photograph on a flat screen, using no special equipment. Those of you who saw The Matrix should be familiar with the concept.

Not all "frozen-time" animations are Piku-Piku. One of the neat things about Piku-Piku is that they are self-calibrating¹, making them comfortable to view. But the best bit is that you can create them yourself - by simply taking two photographs, roughly from the positions of your eyes, and uploading them to start3d.com (email registration required). We do the rest. Your Piku-Piku will be available in seconds.

You can share your album with your family and friends by emailing the URL. If you chose to make your album private, the URL will have a special code in it that unlocks it - people who don't have the code can't see the album. That's all. Your family doesn't even need to register to see the picture. If you get a nice result, you can try to put your photo on the front page by clicking the 'Feature' button. in the image viewing page. We''ll choose our favourites and front page them.

Why not head over the start3d.com now and find out for yourself what 3D photography is all about?

Colin Davidson

Founder, Start 3D

¹ ok, only partially working for now, wait and see!

New Versions and Fixing Glitches.

2009-12-14T09:05:00.001-08:00

Many users have pointed out to us glitches in their Piku-Piku. I hope that it doesn't upset anyone to see their pictures deform in unnatural ways! But, I thought you might want to know what causes the glitch.

In order to make a Piku-Piku, we need to do some kind of image processing on your image pair. We say that two pixels (one from each image) match if those pixels are the image of the same point in the world. So, for each pixel in one of your images, we need to find the matching pixel in the other image. If we can do that accurately, we can infer how much parallax the point should have (closer points should move more than distant points). And if we get that right, for every pixel, the little animation will look great.

Sounds easy? It isn't. There are three big problems. The first one is the wallpaper effect. But some of you know it as the striped scarf effect, and others as the wonky railings effect; still others as the magic sliding floor. Some bits of your image just look too much like other bits of your image, and, as a result, the matcher can erroneously put a whole region at the wrong depth.

The second problem is that it's just not a well-posed question. Some pixels don't have exactly one match! Something in the background might be hidden (occluded) in one view but visible in the other. Pixels near the edge are often cropped out in the other view. Or a pixel could be on a transparent reflective surface like a window, and match two different pixels. These pixels have to be filled in with some pragmatic and approximate techniques. Yes, I do mean that it's a total hack job.

And the third problem is thin structures. They so easily get attached to the thing behind them and move as if they were a line painted on the background. Yuck!

I realise that by now you're thinking that I've covered pretty much every pixel in your image. It's not easy to plan to avoid these issues, and I wouldn't want you to. Rather, when you see a glitch, instead of thinking it doesn't work, we'd like you to think that it doesn't work yet. To encourage you to think this way, we've released a new version of the image processing software! If you have glitches on your pictures then we invite you to switch to version 2. You can do that by viewing your album or photo and clicking on the '2' at the bottom next to the word 'Version'. In the album view, your images will be back to 'processing...' and then they'll appear. There are plenty more 'new versions' to come ... and not all of them are just about fixing glitches.

Getting started.

2009-12-14T08:17:00.000-08:00

We've had a great response to the launch of Start 3D. Thank you for all the kind words and feedback. It's gratifying to see other people taking pleasure in something you've worked hard on. And thank you to those who ran into problems, and are helping us improve the site by telling us about them.

I'm very lucky to be working with a dedicated team of talented web developers and designers at Lateral. We've had a number of compliments about the look of the site, and I think they are to be congratulated on an amazing job in a very tight timeframe.

We have big plans for adding to the Piku-Piku technology that you can see on the site, and we hope that you'll keep coming back to enjoy each new iteration. We're just getting started.

Colin Davidson,

Founder, Start 3D

Welcome

2009-12-03T15:59:00.000-08:00

Welcome to the Start 3D blog!

Please visit our site http://www.start3d.com.