Autopano Pro - the ultimate Stitcher ?

Two issues ago this column focused on the then raging debate over two stitching tools, PT Gui Pro and Stitcher 5.6 Unlimited DS. And although that column focused on two particular stitchers, there are dozens of them on the market at every price point and feature set. There’s certain to be one that suits your tastes and work style.

Kolor’s Autopano Pro is written by Alexandre Jenny who was featured in the last issue of VRMag. I recommend you take a moment to read the interview if you haven’t already.

Pat St Clair’s excellent review on Autopano Pro with many examples can be found in this VRMag article.

Tristan Shu’s VR innovations

Tristan “Shu” Lebeschu talks about his new projects, his techniques and his addiction to photography unveiling some of his best projects.

We first introduced Tristan Shu in issue 27, when we presented to our readers the action packed panoramic images he had shot. He had announced great enhancements and one important fact: that - finally - he had become a full time photographer. Actually, as time passed by, we got curious and we wondered if he had started shooting within a Rugby match or - even better - while bungee-jumping. Poking into his website, we discovered that he was as active as ever, always shooting full throttle.

The VRMag article with many insights on extreme panoramas shooting can be found here.

How to capture 10′000 panoramas in 6 months: an interview with Dennis Martin

One of the world’s leading expert on using spherical photography in virtual locations for movies, Dennis Martin - prior to Speed Racer - has worked on the Matrix trilogy.
In order to work on the Speed Racer movie, Dennis has left his job at Industrial Light and Magic; packed his luggage and said goodbye to his girlfriend and his dog.

Six months away, with a mission to accomplish: to take more than 10′000 VR panoramas in several countries, from France to Morocco; from Italy to Austria.
Back on his side of the ocean, he spent the same amount of time in Los Angeles, to post produce the bubbles which were the locations for Speed Racer, what he considers as being his greatest project so far.

Discover - in this VRMag interview - how Dennis and his team worked, all the processes he was responsible for, and his passions, dreams and pastimes… and many Speed Racer location shots.

Tabb Firchau’s aerial VR Photography by RC Helicopter

360° images from R/C helicopters are Tabb Firchau’s expertise, who kindly shares his thoughts about this challenging task.

Amelia Earhart once stated: “You haven’t seen a tree until you’ve seen its shadow from the sky”. Tabb Firchau, who has grown up with a Pilot dad, understood Amelia’s sentence really early in his life and made a philosophy, a lifestyle and a commerce out of it. The Earth from the sky, with its beauties, its symmetries, its otherwise hidden treasures, its poeticism is the common tread within Tabb’s works, which could see the light thanks to another factor: Tabb’s easiness to experiment, tinker and dare. Requested all around the world for virtual aerial tour, the photographer has either an ever expanding portfolio of 360° images taken onair and an always busy mind, which gives him new ideas and new projects to present to his customers.
Just remember: Keep the blue side up.

The VRMag article with many making of images and panoramas can be found here.

VRMAG Issue 30 is online with Speed Racer and much more

Vrmag Issue 30 is online: http://www.vrmag.org

We had promised you a special issue and - finally! - the 30th is online, with exclusive contents. What will you discover within VRMAG? First of all, our special coverage: Speed Racer. Speed Racer is the most expansive use of VR’s in cinema history. In its pages, VRMAG hosts contents and interviews which directly come from Hollywood. Award winning special effects guru John Gaeta (Matrix trilogy) takes you behind the scenes and the film making of Speed Racer, in a walkthrough loaded with explicative contents, such as 3D animations, bubbles and CGIs. His team - and namely Dennis Martin, Lubo Hristow and Jake Morrison - take you in in-depth coverages on the ways to create a poptimistic photo anime, which sets a new tread for VR industry and is set to become a new benchmark for all future film production. 360Icon, with its panoramas of abandoned places is another great example on how a virtual experience can go beyond reality’s limits: extreme HDR allows you to see more than your eyes could in everyday life. Grasp the colors that your brain does not usually process! The world seen from the sky is always a breathtaking view. For that reason, Bernd Dohrmann, Tabb Firchau, Scott Haefner showcase their best shots, to confirm Leonardo Da Vinci’s famouse quote that “For once you have tasted flight you will walk the earth with your eyes turned skywards, for there you have been and there you will long to return”. Probably he did not take into account that the humankind would have then overshot the atmosphere…We did, and either the NASA or Yoshito Takagi takes you within the modules of ISS and MIR. Something should be noted here: since we care about pollution, we’d like to inform you that Scott Haefner kite is - as the name implies - a zero emission…”transport mode”. On the same wave, Tabb Firchaus’s RC heli doesn’t leave any carbon imprint, given that it is powered by lithium batteries!…And if you’re packing your luggage to explore the world, ask Willy Kaemena about the best trains to jump into: you do not need to go by car! Our columnist Pat St. Clair reviews the ultimate stitcher Stitcher Autopano Pro while Michel Thoby explains how to create a pano head out of your toolbox. Looking for romantic skies? Look no more. Bernd again, did shot the one. Wondering what you teeth see? Wonder no more. Dr. Riley has the answer. Otherwise, check Paul Stewart’s site to get advices on the cruises along the Mekong. Geoffrey Morelle will accompany you to the art exhibitions which take place inside a swimming pool. Are you in search of dramatic experiences? Your adrenaline will rush with Tristan Shu’s action packed images, and with Aloha Dean’s scuba diving missions. And you know what? You’ve just been invited to a wedding, which has immortalized by Mike Jensen (and no, you do not have to stay for hours long dinners!)… Sarah Kenderdine talks about the Eye of the Nagaur, a pioneering interactive digital multimedia installation made with state of the art photographic and visualisation technologies. In this issue we have 4 outstanding guest artists: The duo Wright-George, who created - with its Godin’s sphere - what we consider as being a breakthrough in the field of immersive visual concept art. As well, enjoy Will Pearson’s transfiguration of the commonplaces while Timothée Eisenegger takes you on a world trip in VR and finally Dennis Martin, one of the world’s leading expert on using spherical photography in virtual locations for movies, talks about his Speed Racer experience: shooting 10′000 panos in 6 months. VR Industry: Since when Zoomify VR was discontinued, we were waiting to know the possibilities that KRPano is offering: we had a conversation with Klaus its developer, to discover that…Henning Kramer talks about the MKpanomachine and Roberto Mancuso shares his tutorial on the Quick Pan Professional. On the technical side, we updated VRMAG’s media viewer, which now delivers Flash VR to non QT systems, and we added comments below the articles. Oh yes, we hope to see lots of them For the first time, you’ll see ads on VRMAG. Be indulgent, since this fact has 2 reasons: first the steadily increasing traffic (in order to guarantee worldwide fast viewing of the multimedia content of the articles we activated a CDS - content delivery system - which creates additional costs) and second we need to raise funds for an upcoming community project, that we’ll launch in the next months. … And don’t forget to write us about your VR projects and ideas, VRMag is the right place to reach a wider audience. At the time I’m writing this newsletter we are linked from the homepages of BoingboingTV and Slashdot.org. More explosive than ever, issue nr. 30 marks our jubilee. Are you ready to party? You’re just a click away from enjoying the new VRMAG issue! Your Marco Trezzini and the VRMAG team

Vrmag Issue 30 is online: http://www.vrmag.org

VIRTUAL TOUR OF RICHARD MEIER’S ARA PACIS MUSEUM IN ROME

The city of Rome’s newly elected right-wing mayor has caused waves by vowing to rip down a controversial museum created by a US architect.
Gianni Alemanno said the Ara Pacis Museum, which encases a 2,000-year-old sacrificial altar, “will be removed”.

View a Virtual Tour of the Ara Pacis Museum:

Please click here to view the full VRMAG article VALENTINO AT RICHARD MEIER’S ARA PACIS MUSEUM IN ROME with interactive panoramas.

VRMag Issue 30 is online with exclusive Speed Racer coverage

Enjoy !
Marco Trezzini and the VRMAG team.

May 1 on VRMag: exclusive Speed Racer Coverage

Exclusive coverage of Speed Racer the movie: you will be able to enter movie locations and scenes through immersive VR panoramas and explore the Mach 5 and 6 in detail. Featuring in depth interviews with award winning special effects guru John Gaeta, and his key FX team members Dennis Martin, Lubo Histrov , Euisung Lee, and Jake Morrison unveiling the secrets of Speed Racer. All articles are supported by images and videos.

Click here for the special speed racer splash page

VRMAG ISSUE 29 IS ONLINE

We are in the middle of the IPY,The International Polar Year, which is a large scientific programme focused on the Arctic and the Antarctic from March 2007 to March 2009. IPY occurs amidst abundant evidence of changes in snow and ice, including reductions in extent and mass of glaciers and ice sheets, reductions in area, timing, and duration of snow cover, and reductions in extent and thickness of sea ice. The observations and modeling of IPY will document and quantify the extent, rate and impact of snow and ice changes and their integrated impact on global sea level.

So I thought that it would be nice that VRMAG pays a homage to this joint effort through the panoramas and words of a group of very different and special man creating outstanding panoramas related to the theme ice. You will be standing on glacier summits, get inside them, meet ice bears, experience northern lights and much more.

Jordi Clariana, takes you on 2 weeks photographic expedition to the Svalbard Island; a tourist if seen from Witek Katzskin’s perspective, since he lives and works at the Horsund polish Polar station located on the island; Dr Matt Nolan studying the impacts of climate change on the arctic landscape; Rodion Galanev travelling to Karelia, called the region of thousands lakes, created by the melting of the glaciers which covered the region during ice age; Werner Weber, capturing the St Moritz White Turf Horse race, Jean-Pierre Lavoie, Quebec City, shooting the Red Bull Crashed Ice skating competition; Keiji Yokotani, taking you to the Shikotsu Ice festival in Japan; Yvan Van Hoorickx invites you to the indoor Snow & Ice Sculpture Festival in Bruges; Tabb Firchau, shooting from a RC helicopter partially frozen Green Lake in Seattle Washington… as well as links to a series of previously published ice related articles.

Since we believe Love is the most important thing on this planet, we’ll take you to Paris where you have very special new ways to say “I love you” to your dearest; to Berlin at Lifeball, celebrating universal love to raise funds to fight aids; to Mali, to see the efforts of Médecins Sans Frontières fighting malaria; to Molokai, Hawaii, to meet father Damien a charismatic and compassionate caregiver.

For our “inside” series this time you will be able to enter a dishwasher, a sports shoe, a halloween pumpkin, as well as enter a Avro vulcan cockpit, a Nascar race truck, get into Ratatuilles Kitchen, and finally view the inside of a fridge with a very special model, the vegetarian turtle “Iso”.

In addition we’ll take you the Highland games in Scotland, explore the palaces of european monarchy, visit Turkey’s fastest growing panorama resource, take a day trip to Dubai, see Lauren dancing, visit Carhenge, explore wooden churches in Poland, and join Ignacio hanging at 230 meters from the ground.

And yes, also VRMAG’s team has it’s weaknesses, so we’ll get into politics showing you panoramas of Barak Obama, Hillary Clinton, John Edwards and Ron Paul, as well as some topless girls on a beach in Brasil.

Our guest artist for this issue is Henry Stuart who shares the secrets of his success; Greg Downing describes how he created 270 gigapixel images in 3 1/2 months and shows a series of breathtaking gigapixel images, our columnist Pat St Clair reviews the HDR software Hydra, while Jook Leung announces his new workshop in Maine.

Get to know better Denis Chumakov, the creator of Flash Panorama Player, Alexandre Jenny, co-creator of Autopano Pro. Michael Thoby talks about Enfuse for night photography while Jeffrey informs about the 2008 Panotools meeting in Prague he’s organizing.

Your
Marco Trezzini

CLICK HERE TO DISCOVER ISSUE 29 OF VRMAG

PANORAMAS OF THE CARNIVAL IN RIO AND SAO PAOLO BRAZIL BY AYRTON AND TRESCA

Just got an email from Ayrton about his latest great project:

“I’m very proud to invite all to see at the biggest Latin America webportal
TERRA, the coverage of Carnival in interactive panoramas 360º.

This time i’ve been assigned to shoot the two biggest capitals of Brazil.
To do so, I contacted a good fellow, and big friend of mine, Dudu
Tresca from São Paulo, and got him involved in the project with me.
So he’s shooting in São Paulo and me in Rio de Janeiro.

To see our work, you can go here everyday to see new panos coming.

Or you can just choose on the Carnival page and on Menu > ‘FOLIA 360º”