Imagine yourself carrying a 12 kg device (around 26 lb) from one place to another with a laptop and a tripod that had a broken leg, how would it be like? Yep, sucks. The only thing now I'm sorry for is that I couldn't bring my camera to snap images for the place from the outside or inside. The building looks neat in the outside but it is still not complete yet nor inhabited inside. Renovation work was all around. I had just to fix the device on the tripod and wait for 30 minutes to make 30 readings and that's it. In two locations. But the fact that my car was parked somehow far away from the entrance and that we have a lovely sun, made one damn thing of the whole thing. The building looks nice from the outside with the logo of Viva Telecom. I really don't know how I drove back to my office, and now I'm thinking seriously about one week of vacation, as I told a friend earlier.
I spent last night working on some panorama as usual and this time I really wanted to work on Autodesk's Stitcher program. I think I've wronged the software a bit in my last post saying that it does not support HDR images, but in fact it does. It supports OpenEXR and Radiance formats (.exr and .hdr respectively). The thing is, it is not as flexible as PTGui still. When I loaded some EXR files, it did not accept them all (and even for normal JPG files), because their dimensions might be different slightly in some pixels. PTGui never showed this problem to me. On the other hand it was useful but still I need to understand more about the QTVR aspect. I could easily load a panorama and it will convert it to a QTVR (QuickTime Virtual Reality). I need to grasp more about the pixel dimensions and how to make the default window fit, because the original QTVR was 25MB and I wanted to resize that to a smaller size, and yet, I couldn't get a good resolution when the player run the QTVR. Finally, I've resized the panorama itself to something smaller and made a QVTR out of it. The player should be fixed to half of the "original" size (in the View menu) so that no blurry pixels occur to the eyes. I was trying to put my file here but still I don't know to use it (probably by using HTML and putting my file some where on the net and grab it here).
PTGui also supports QTVR, but it goes on with a spherical coordinates, while Autodesk stitcher makes it in a cylindrical format. In my case the cylindrical format is better for the time being because most of my panoramas lack the zenith (top) and nadir (below).
The Guest Room panorama is still on the go now. I made several versions out of it and I felt so tired to fix it really. There was one thing though that made me surprised with PTGui. I rendered the panorama in Little Planet projection and, the optimization turned out 'Very Good!' ! I was surprised and somehow I did indeed believed the theory that this panorama specifically must be in a circular (or little planet) shape. After stitching I surprisingly discovered that it contained more errors than the semi-regular ones! I can't really tell how did the optimization process go to turn out a very good result.
However, I tried to reduce the amount of flare, or should I say, the hot colors in the images, but this should be done before tone-mapping even. When I tried that with some "cool color" Photo Filter layer in Photoshop, it did not go well enough when I tried to tone-map later. So, I kept it HOT as it is. I made 3 main panoramas:
1. Normal (to some extent):
2. Goldish Hue:
3. The Dirty Look:
Now, why I made the dirty look version is something else. I was trying in fact to make a spooky place by adding so much darkness and fainting the colors and make them less saturated. But I think it didn't turn out well, but instead, it would be fit for a regular dirty place. I think what we need here is some visual effects and not mereily a play of light in the scene. I was tired to clean the tripod away. There are as well still some broken lines, but maybe not so obvious in this smaller version here.
Right now, I'm going to have one week of vacation starting from next Thursday, and hopefully I will keep posting here while taking a rest at home for real, although one week is not a big deal I would say really. I'm just in need for nice sleep. Really.
__________
721. then Alexander peeked into the great groove
722. then he looked at Utéfah and this he said
723. "what else did you read in the papers of Ázilis?"
724. and Utéfah replied: what I read was a lot,
725. but for now you just need to know where to go,
726. keep the Charnagút in your hand and never let it go,
727. it is a sword assigned by your name,
728. put it on the side of the groove and step on it,
729. it will guide you to the great gate of the Ayvar lands
730. and the hero wondered to Utéfah: you mean the gate is in this groove?
731. and Utéfah replied: this is what I cannot tell because I do not know
732. so Alexander put the Charnagút on the side of the groove
733. and stepped on it while the moon's light grew bigger
734. and slowly like a foggy dream some steps appeared
735. and down to the groove they went
736. they were shiny like blocks of light
737. but Alexander stood amazed looking at Utéfah
738. and this he did say: are you not coming with me O good man?
739. but Utéfah shook his head left and right to say No
740. and Alexander urged him to come down with him
741. and Utéfah smiled and said: you trusted God all this time,
742. thus there is no need to put a trust in me,
743. for I am nothing but a grain of dust,
744. and the task was destined for you in the Beginning
No comments:
Post a Comment