Greetings, all.

I've seen some very good work by VR producers with Object Modeling. Seems like an interesting venture so I thought I'd see what's involved. I can see now that it can be quite tedious and time consuming to get good results... especially without the proper equipment (turntable, camera mount, etc.)

But just for grins I fashioned a make-shift "turntable" out of a cardboard box, wax paper, a thumb tack, tupperware lid and a piecee of string (don't laugh! It's what I had lying around.)  I also wanted to try something difficult to photograph, so I borrowed a tiny glass elephant from my wife's collection. Glass turned out to be quite a challenge to capture because of its transparency. Anyway, the whole thing was done entirely by hand in PhotoShop (way too much work!) But it didn't turn out too bad for what I had to work with.

If anyone's interested, I posted the Model here. I'd like to try out ModelWeaver. to see if saves some time.

Thanks,

Brian Jackson - RotoPix

The greater number of pictures the larger the filesize and the smoother it will rotate.  If you have not already done so.. you might consider viewing a 1998 Acura. 

I think we took 40 or so....36 at 10° and a few more for opening/ closing doors etc.

http://360texas.com/services/om/omcar.htm

The cell phone is less than spectacular but still novel.

http://360texas.com/services/om/om.htm

Yes... removing background on 40 images CAN be labor intensive.

Dave

Hi Dave.

Impressive photos of the Acura & cell phone. Thank you for the links. Yes, I understand the "smoothness" issue. That's why the example I posted used 64 images. When the viewer starts it displays 5 or 6... I guess to retain people's attention while the rest of the frames load. The final "Object Model" is about 700kb for all 64 frames. Dial-up connections take a minute or two.

I'm "guesstimating" that we should keep each frame to around 10~15k. 64 frames could easily rack up the file size.

Just so I know, what was your experience in viewing the Glass Elephant file? Did the viewer tell you that it was loading the subsequent frames during the preview? Or did it just show you the 5-frame preview without telling you there were more frames to see? I'm very curious.

Thanks again for your help and suggestions. I truly appreciate it.

Respectfully,

Brian Jackson - RotoPix

Hi Brian,

Well done mate, I liked your equipment description!

It displayed very "Smooth" for me with all 64 frames and took only seconds to download with aDSL. I have never done any modelling photography, but will do so one day just like you have.

Congratulations on all that work to produce your final object.

Regards, Smooth

hey brian,

at the beginning it wasnt perfectly smooth because as you said, only 5 - 6 images were being used. but even then it was ok.

the viewer did not tell me it was downloading the subsequent frames.

after it finished downloading, the rotation was very smooth (meaning it wasnt jumpy at all). obiously the shots were not completely leveled due to your home made turn table. but even the, it was super.

tip which might help.  when shooting small items like this that reflect light, you can you use a white 3 panel cardboard display sold at office depot or officemax. this way you dont have all those colors on the glass figure. just a thought that might work.

best wishes mate.

Hi ya folks,

Object modeling is fun but indeed takes time.

I'm too lazy to clean up the background when I did a couple a while back.  It was a local scout event and I just didn't have time to really spend time with it.

I'll post the samples shortly.

r,
eagle

Hi all,

Another method of displaying an object Vr. Click here [shockwave required]. Click on image to zoom and stop the movement.

Regards,
Chiranjeev

Ahhh I am pleased that you mentioned Shockwave technique. 

Directly above and to the right of the car object, you will see a large area displaying numbers.  Mouse over the numbers left and right and they will change.  This is a FLASH object model.  Each number is a frame containing an actual image. 

http://360texas.com/services/om/omcar.htm

If you have FLASH then click the text link to download the object model .fla template file.  The secret is to replace the existing number images with your own object images.  I think there are 36 key frames.  If you need 64 then place additional frames in the center section which will make the sequence longer.

Enjoy.

Dave

Hi ya folks,

Here's the sample object model.

r,
eagle

Hi guys.

Thanks for all the great info and links. One thing puzzles me however... Some of the ModelWeaver Google hits mention that it can do "Edge Detection", yet their documentation and demo program make no mention of this "feature" that I can tell.

There are some programs out there that do this, such as Anything3D.com, unfortunately their demo program is stripped of this Edge Detection masking feature, so there's no way to see how well it works. Another program called Object Works supposedly does this too, but only on a Mac.

Surely there exists a program somewhere that can help automate the background removal process. PhotoShop has some great tools that help with this, if you have the time to edit frame by frame. Anyone have any software suggestions? Or did I miss something in ModelWeaver? Thanks.

Respectfully,

Brian Jackson - RotoPix