Can Houdini Select render 3D stereoscopic output?

well first, there needs to be more of specific explanation of what stereoscopic method you're going after.. (anaglyph, polarized, pulfrich..)

as far as houdini being able to directly output any of those, than no.. but it can be done, but you should be going towards a red/blue anaglyph method.

polarized will require some expensive hardware to output to overlapping screens so unless you're willing to invest in that, than don't look in to it. and

pulfrich is kinda of a cheat and doesnt work all that well. it's based off of the time it takes for light to enter through one dark lense and one clear lense and in to each eye, therefor offsetting one eye slightly from the other creating the 3d effect. it's not a great method and basically only works with horizontal movement.

now anaglyph can be done and relatively cheaply. you will need to off set two camera's side by side and looking at the same point (much like our own eyes do). you will then have to render two sequences, one from the left eye camera and one from the right eye camera. then in your comp app of choice, you can offset the appropriate channels based on your glasses. i know after effects even has a 3d glasses filter you can use.

i had a setup of this a while back in houdini and it worked out pretty nicely. took me only a day or so to get it up and running too. one thing you should be aware of is that any 3d sterescopic film/movie works best at large so that it can fill most of your viewing perception. when you have this running on a monitor in front of you, you are viewing the other things around the monitor as well which degrade from “tricking” you mind in to the 3d space.


hth,
dave

I want to do polarized output. Any hints on that? Just to steer me in the right direction?

Thanks for the reply so far though.

well alright… if you're going after a polarized version, then your setup in houdini will be exactly the same as the anaglyph method… you will need to camera's, linked side by side, looking at the same point (null).. this is much like how our own eyes work… you will then have to render out two sequences.. one from left cam and one from right cam.

now, the tough part is getting the two sequences to become polarized and overlapped. this is where the expensive hardware comes in.. you will either need two sync'd projectors with lenses capable of projecting polarized images. you will also have to have these angled and overlapping just right for it to work. the other alternative out there are single 3d projectors that can do it all in a DLP. Those can get expensive quick. And also another opion are monitors that can display various 3d/stereoscopic imagery but i haven't looked in to them enough to say how they work or how well..

you will have to do a little research on your own, but these links might be of use:

http://www.neotek.com/3dtheory.htm [neotek.com]

http://www.stereo3d.com/ [stereo3d.com]

http://www.stereo3d.com/dlppleading.htm [stereo3d.com]

http://www.stereoscopy.com/ [stereoscopy.com]

and looks like siggraph will be having a class on this topic as well this year.. could be really interesting:

http://www.siggraph.org/s2004/conference/courses/18.php?pageID=conference [siggraph.org]


hth,
dave

Thanks dave.. great info and much appreciated. Definately some links there I hadn't read yet. Off to study!

Just FYI. I was looking at the Christie Mirage Series of DLP projectors.

Hrm.. I've been meaning to get down to LA anyway. I'll have to check that out in August if at all possible. It's terribly relevant to why I'm asking all these questions in the first place.

hey, got some more goodies for ya after finding the folder i had of the stereo example a made a while back…

a couple more links that proved useful to me:

for After Effects, but methods could be taken else where:

http://www.puppetkites.net/AE3D/ [puppetkites.net]

for Animation Master, but once again can be used in app of choice:

http://www.hash.com/users/stereo/camvar.html [hash.com]

and here is the file i made if you or anyone else is interested in looking at it.. took some time to tweak the camera lookat null's distance to get the right angle offset but i had it working with red/blue glasses pretty well after a while… i remember reading somewhere that some methods use an infinite distance lookat (so there would be no lookat null, just cams parallel side by side..) and some other methods looked at a certain point some distance down the line. might have to do a little research in to that..

the way i have it setup, you would animate the cams_lookat null to move the cams around.. it's kinda of odd that way but works and is better if using the transform handle in the viewport..

http://studentpages.scad.edu/~dquiru20/stereoptics.hipnc [studentpages.scad.edu]

hth,
dave