In article <3e1813fe@news.povray.org>, orp### [at] btinternetcom says...
> > The fact that they insist on using jpg or similar lossy formats for
> > digital cameras I find completely insane and it isn't all that great for
> > rendering either, unless you specifically need to save space. In the case
> > of stereograms it is almost certain to be lethal.
> 
> Yeah, I know... (But then, *my* digital camera is so lame it probably
> doesn't make any odds. *sigh*) And it would kill the sterograms.
> 
Yeah. We have one of the lame ones too. Interestingly enough there are 
algorithms out for magnification of images that look nearly as good at 3 
times the original size, but all the junk they give you with the cameras 
an which is used standard in editing programs still rely almost entirely 
on the '200% = each pixel gets copied to form 4 pixels' method. :p 
Between that and the unfortunate tendency of even high end problems to 
crash and 'then' inform you that you didn't have the memory to do 
something... Lost about 20 pictures one time trying to adjust the 
intensity of part of the image in one to bring out details. I hadn't 
saved any of the files first. But the portfolio ones that come with the 
cameras (and do auto save) suck imho. Oh, well..

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hi Andrew, hi All,

Andrew Coppin wrote:
 > It was about June time last year that I discovered how Single Image
 > Sterograms ("magic eye pictures") work. You can actually make 'em
 > out of plain ordinary text! I've done so with Notepad many times...
 >
 > But I figured you should be able to do it with POV-Ray too - after
 > all, it IS a 3D program!!!

as i mentioned in my last post, i am currently developping this
a little bit further. i wrote a perl script to create SIRDS from
image files.

i fixed a lot of bugs (!), and added some new features again.
though it still renders SIRDS only, it now supports

- reading and writing of targa format version 1 image files
   (only those produced by povray, with the settings that i
   usually use; which are 24 or 32 bit (w/o [with or without(?)]
   alpha channel),
- scans the command line for depth map and texture file names
   (it even supports escaped wildcards like "image\*" for depth
   map files, so i can render a full range of frames for an
   animation) - but the texture feature is not yet working.

so i could finish my first six seconds of an animated SIRDS
clip. i hope that i will be able to compress it to some
reasonable size.. without losing too much image information
due to lossy compression.

when i played with one video card's controls, i found that a
rather dark picture with a few bright dots is astoundingly
brilliant when animated! - my eyes also liked it alot, btw! ;)

so, i'll make the images mainly black, and set some
occasional bits along the way. this is quite easy to run
length encode, so i will probably even post a FLiC or such.

i will also add textures to the SIRDS to color them..

and sometime maybe also "real" color, directly from the
depth map file! - as this is either a 24 or 32 bit targa,
so i also have the alpha channel at my disposal - it can
be fed with depth values from a gradient (as described
in news://news.povray.org:119/3e1925c4@news.povray.org ),
leaving the full 24 bits for colors.

i could of course do it in two passes and just render both
layers separately. but neither do i like the idea of doubling
the data amount (well, at the worst), nor the increase in
processing time and disk clicking due to a second file
having to be read and processed. :/

but any way i use the "filter" or "transmit" values to get the
"z-alpha", either i get just some color, and the alpha values are
quite off, or a little more color, and a devastated alpha channel
in most places (especially where objects overlap or, even worse,
intersect!)

you can visit my homepage to see some examples:

   http://www.psico.ch/index.php?page=sis

if anybody can see what i mean and knows how this can be fixed,
please contact me!

[...]
 > PS. Can anyone here see sterograms btw? Kinda pointless if you
 > can't :P

sure. - mine are even moving and turning..! - would be sad
if *i* couldn't! :D


g.

-- 
mailto:gim### [at] psicoch
http://www.psico.ch/
http://psico.servehttp.com/

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sorry, mozilla seems to have a problem with my accounts
- again, it changed the from: field when i saved and
re-opened the post before sending it.

the mail address you should use to contact me is the one
below. - thank you. ;)

g.

-- 
mailto:gim### [at] psicoch
http://www.psico.ch/ 
http://psico.servehttp.com/

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