Here I give a quick demo of how to use my new Blender addon: Surround Projection Tools. It lets you very quickly and conveniently setup everything I went over in my tutorial on Creating a Surround Projection Camera Setup in Blender. If you haven’t already seen that, it would probably be good to watch it first as I reference many of the things I covered there.
This was created using Blender 2.6 rev 41805 (svn build) so it will most likely not work with significantly older versions as the python API changed a lot during the development of 2.5. However any recent version should be fine.
CURRENT VERSION (0.1.2)
- streamlined GUI so that the add/remove buttons are in the same place
- added patch suggested by Campbell Barton making new scenes have the original as a background scene (no more remove/re-add if you add/delete objects)
UPDATE: The script is now part of the official contributed extensions. For information about how to get it (and all other contributed scripts) check out the blender wiki. There has also been an update to where this and other experimental scripts are now included in svn builds by the way.
6 comments
No ping yet
Sam Schad says:
November 18, 2011 at 3:33 pm (UTC -7)
Cole-
It seems like I saw opensource software that would link your projectors for you after producing a product using the technique above. It was on BlenderNation at some point.
What software/tools do you use to synchronize your video sources on location? I’d be highly interested in knowing, if you’re willing to share.
coleingraham says:
November 18, 2011 at 3:44 pm (UTC -7)
For my recent show I actually wrote my own video player in c++ which could respond to network commands. I had 6 videos running off of 3 computers (4 + 1 + 1) and could send start/stop/goto messages from a 4th computer which was running all the sound. That’s a bit much I understand but it was something I felt I needed in this case. The player itself works well but needs a major overhaul before I’d consider sending it out into the world.
If you remember the other software you mentioned I’d love to take a look at it.
Clemens says:
November 19, 2011 at 3:46 am (UTC -7)
A thirty Camera Setup might not be so ridiculous after all. If you render thirty thin vertical stripes and join them, you will end up with a 360° Panorama Image in cylindrical Projection.
coleingraham says:
November 20, 2011 at 11:32 am (UTC -7)
True but that is also achievable via using the built-in panorama mode for the camera. I’m actually soon going to add support for that as well for if you set the number of screen to 1 (360 panorama) or 2 (2 x 180 panorama). Currently there is a minimum of 3 cameras since less requires that mode (and some other tweaks). The one catch currently is that panorama isn’t supported by cycles yet so that would be internal only.
ric says:
November 20, 2011 at 12:56 pm (UTC -7)
can we do something like this?
http://www.360video.com/gallery/
coleingraham says:
November 20, 2011 at 1:04 pm (UTC -7)
Probably but the best way to handle something like that would be to use the camera’s built-in panorama feature. I’ll actually be adding support for that to my script soon so that you could make one 360 panorama or 2 180 ones since that’s the only way to deal with less than 3 cameras/screens.
What you could do is render out your animation as a panorama and map it as a texture onto a cylinder in some realtime application (BGE?).