3D, Virtual World – always intriguing subject

Background

One of my research interests is 3D and virtual space and it always attracts me. I continuously try to bring some 3D graphics or 3-dimensional space into my design work. This interest in 3D also led me to initiate the project TwitTown for iPad. These days, 3D became another important element in movie theater and entertainment. Consumer electronics companies are competitively announcing 3D TVs and many film makers are also into making 3D movies. As a previous engineer who studied electrical engineering in college, I became to interested in the technologies. During the research, I could find the mechanism of active shutter glasses that is used in 3D TVs and some hologram technologies.

3D Movies in theater were ignited by the movie ‘Avatar’

Success of 3D Movies also brought 3D TVs into home entertainment

At the same time, a lot of design studios in Seoul, Korea are jumping into interactive design and some of design studios are using the hologram technologies in big presentations, product demos and showcases. I could have a chance to visit some of those company and introduced the technologies.

Samsung Jet presentation using 3D hologram

After these kind of interesting research about 3D technologies and their design applications, my focus moved to the 360 degree 3D panoramic world constructed by photos.  This was the example that I found on the web : a panorama made with Papervision.

http://www.papervision3d.org/demos/panorama/

Questions

Series of demos of these realistic 3D panorama virtual world inspired me to study about panorama photos. The question was simple – “How can I make a 3D panorama world with my photos and drawings?”, “I want to build my own 3D world!”

Building a prototype space

Since I’ve been interested in 3D, I was familiar with Papervision3D – 3D engine for Flash, and I started research about building virtual space. My initial prototype with simple sphere structure was like this. I just used one of my photos taken in NYC. (1504×1000px)

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As you can see, the photo image was simply used for the texture of environmental sphere. After this rapid prototyping, I could see some important elements in the photo – both ends should be continuous because they will be connected. Also, it looks like the ratio of the photo is also important. Currently the image is very distorted. So I extended the photo with horizontally flipped one and tested again.(3004×1000px)

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As you can see from this prototype, now I can have full 360 degree of continuous space. But the buildings and cars are severely distorted. Why?

Special method to take 360 degree photos

After some days of research, I found a website which introduces how to take panorama photos and I realized the fact that normal wide formatted panorama photos are not proper for 360 degree world. For example, these photos are just normal wide/long panorama photos.

Additionally, I could remind the planar figure of the earth.

The website, Panoguide(http://www.panoguide.com) provided diverse method of taking panorama photos and I could find the special method and devices to take 360 degree panorama photo. Basically, we have to take diverse photos from different angles then stitching software stitches the photos like these.

Do you see the difference? Yes, they have some weird distorted space but, when these images are mapped onto the surface of the sphere, it gives us perfect 360 degree panorama VR.

Unfortunately, it is not easy to make this type of photo. With wide lens camera, you have to shoot 23 photos like this.

Or use special camera like this. (Just like Google street view cam)

Then, a stitch software such as PTGUI stitches and blends the photos into texture for 360 sphere.

Ok then… How about the reverse?

After these exciting research, I started thinking about interesting topic. These photo taking methods and stitching process is to convert the real world into 2D texture (for 3D Sphere). Then would it be possible to create 2D textures not from the real world but from my drawings?
In simple sentence – “I want to create 360 VR city from my drawing”.

I thought this is possible because I could see some patterns from the 360 panorama photos. Just like the image below, I could see some hidden curves which are commonly shown in the photos of 360 panorama photos.

So I draw a rough sketch based on the curves that I draw roughly. From the Panoguide website, I found the information that the image should be 2:1, and I used 3000×1500px for the scanned image of my drawing.

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As you can see, even though there are some weird spots and somewhat distorted, it show quite good 360 VR view of the street and buildings. After this, to get more accurate curve guidelines, I draw the curves from the 360 VR images like this.

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Finally, my own world.

Based on previous prototypes and sketches, I draw a imaginary city and the camera (user’s viewpoint) will be located on the intersection of two streets.

This is the initial sketch to check out layout and distortion.

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And this is revised my final drawing and 360 VR.

Final 360 degree VR in Full Screen : Please be patient for loading texture image.

http://www.cre8ive.kr/Projects/PanoramaVision/PanoramaVision.html

Right Click the screen and select ‘Go Full Screen’ on the menu

Application for real world : Installation for an exhibition

After this project, I was lucky to apply this experience to real installation work for an exhibition. An exhibition of cartoon artist in Korea who is famous for social cartoons. The interactive installation was designed to provide a fun way to explore his cartoon world in 360 degree panorama view. The display will be 50-inch flat panel LCD screen and I suggested an interesting interface for this installation – A trackball interface from Kensington. This interface provides visitors more familiar way to rotate the sphere view of 360 degree virtual world with same shaped, sphere. The ball is huge enough so that it works well with huge sphere of VR. The exhibition will be opened in September in Seoul, so I will not be able to see the actual users and their reactions but I’m really excited. Photos of the installation will be available soon.