Tutorial - Converting Cylindrical Image to Cubic Movie

This tutorial shows how to convert a cylindrical image previously used for an older format QuickTime VR movie into a cubic movie, and two techniques to reduce the limitations of the cylindrical format.

Step 1

Drag the cylindrical image into the conversion area.

(For this tutorial we are using an image which could have been prepared by a cylindrical stitching program such as the QuickTime VR Authoring Studio. However, a freshly extracted image from an existing version 1 or 2 QuickTime VR movie could also be used.)

Step 2

Once loaded and detected as a cylindrical image, CubicConverter will display the "Field of View" (FOV) control to the right of the image.

The FOV control indicates the amount of image coverage which will be used during conversion to the cubic format (which in turn determines the size of the "holes" in the cylinder).

If the image has not been resized since stitching, then the FOV should be correct. Otherwise, if the image has been resized or you want to manipulate it further, the FOV can be changed by dragging the blue "knobs" at the end of the degree markers.

For this tutorial, we will leave the FOV as detected.

Step 3

Click the "Convert" button to begin converting the cylindrical image to a cubic format movie.

Step 4

Once converted, you can tilt the resulting movie up and down to see the effect of the "holes" produced as a consequence of the cylindrical format.

The smaller the FOV of the source cylinder (meaning, the less amount of scene photographed), the larger the holes will be.

This tutorial now presents two techniques for lessening the impact of the holes for the viewer of the converted movie.

Step 5

As the top of the movie consists simply of blue sky, we can fairly easily "fill it in" using Photoshop.

Switch to the "Cube Faces" tab, select the top cube face, then drag the image out.

Step 6

Open this image in Photoshop.

Then choose the Elliptical Marquee tool, and feather it by 10 pixels.

Step 7

Holding down option and shift and starting at the center, drag out a circle over the black hole.

Allow approximately 20 pixels of overlap at the edges, which will be feathered by the marquee tool to create a smoother transition between what we fill the hole with and the image around it.

Step 8

Now choose the Eyedropper tool and set the foreground color to the light shade of blue near the top of the circle, and the background color to the deeper shade of blue near the bottom.

Step 9

Choose the Gradient tool.

Then hold down shift and drag from the top of the circle to the bottom.

When completed, the black hole should be filled with shades of blue that resemble the sky and the feathered edge should help create a smooth transition with the rest of the image.

Step 10

Save this image, and replace the existing cube face image with it by dropping it onto the cube face it came from.

Step 11

Click "Convert" to rebuild the movie.

The hole in the sky should now have gone. If we did our Photoshop work well then the fakery should not be too evident.

Step 12

We now turn our attention to dealing with the hole at the bottom.

While we could painstakingly recreate the beach in Photoshop, we are going to assume that the claustrophic effect of a cylindrical movie has been lessened by the addition of a full sky, and that the user is not going to be so concerned about looking at the sand at their feet.

We will therefore constrain the minimum tilt angle to simply prevent the user seeing the hole, as detailed in another tutorial.

Step 13

By dragging-panning in the normal QTVR way, position the tilt of the movie to just above the black hole.

Step 14

Go to the Movie Settings panel to the left of the movie and click the triangle next to "Min/Max Settings" to reveal them.

Step 15

Click the "Set" button underneath the minimum tilt angle, which by default is "-90.0".

The movie's minimum tilt will be constrained to the current position of the movie.

When the user now pans and tilts the movie, they will be able to look straight up to see (our replaced) sky, thus reducing some of the claustrophobic effect of a cylindrical movie, and look down to part way down the beach.

The cylindrical image has now been converted to a cubic movie and can be saved and used wherever cubic movies can be used.

This ends the tutorial.

Watch Movie of Tutorial Being Performed  [2:20]

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