I just got a Geforce 3 from Asus, and included were some 3D shutter glasses.
Also there were some 3D pictures to be found on the CD-ROM.

The 3D still images are unfortunately displayed using line interleaving,
which results in a rather flickering display and loss of half of the
vertical resolution (2 800x300 images in 3D instead of one 800x600 image)
(for games, page flipping can be used, so you get a 3D 800x600 image).

Anyway, I thought about the way those images were made.
They simply consist of two images taken from a different positions.
Each image is then assigned to the even or odd lines, so that each eye sees
one of the two images, thus creating the stereo illusion.

Once I knew the principle of how those images are created I figured it
shouldn't be too difficult to create some my own.
And Povray is ideal for this, as you can experiment as much as you like with
all the 3D settings.
It took me less than a day to create a way of making those 3D images.

This is how I did it (though there are some things I do not know, and the
method uses some trial and error).

I took the PAWNS.POV sample that comes with the POVRAY distributions.
I left alone the default 4/3 aspect ratio (very important !!!).
The image was saved as PAWNS.BMP
Next I changed the first parameter in the look_at line (this is the X axis).
I saved it under the name PAWNS2.POV, resulting in a slightly different
PAWNS2.BMP.
Now came the hard work
Somehow I had to merge the two files.
So I created a simple Turbo-C (the DOS version) program that would read 2
RAW files and subsequently take a line (800 pixels x 3 bytes per pixel (24
bits colour)) from each file (2400 bytes), and write them to a merged file.
To create the RAW files I converted them with Paint Shop Pro.

The only thing I don't know is if I 'm doing it right, there is some depth
in the images that I created, but I don't know how far each image should be
from the other.
Maybe there could be more depth in those images

how to calculate that with the parameters location, direction, sky, up,
right, look_at, and so forth.

Anyway, if you 're interested in the program that joins 2 800x600x24 colours
images (it 's very limited for the time being), or if you want to see an
example of such a 3D image, send me a mail.
Of course, I doubt that you can do anything with the image if you don't have
shutter glasses or they work in a different way.

BTW : the images I 'm talking about were done entirely by other people,
since I don't have much knowledge about creating my own pictures.
I just like to tinker with aspect ratios, 3D,etc.

Post a reply to this message