SOA, Samsung Gear VR, 3d stereoscopic spherical rendering and VRay

[cecofuli]

Hello guy,
welcome back from SOA  =)
I was very excited by the Gear VR and the demo done with VRay.
It was the first time for me with such Virtual 3D glasses.
Mi question is: how can be possible to create such APP, animation system etc?
The beauty is that you can "fell" the depth inside the room because the stereo system, and not only the 360 environment.

I think it's not so difficult, but I don't find any resources. I want to explain better.
Inside the Galaxy S6 there are a dual 360 spherical rendering, in stereoscopic mode. One for the lest, one for the right.



If you watch inside the glasses and, for example, you look at the door, a little cube appears and you can change the room.

So, my questions are

1. how can be possible to create a stereoscopic 360 spherical rendering?
2. How can be possible to build an android APP with this navigation system? My friend told that it's possible only with Unity.

Thanks so much!

[Juraj]

[Should have started this thread in General section (esp. since this is Corona related I don't think anyone reads this section much though :- ) ..]

I was also in SOA, met cecofuli (who confused me as hell since I didn't know what he looked like in life ) and generally had great time, fantastic presentations this year...
...and yeah, ChaosGroup kinda had impressive one :- ).

To answer Cecofuli and keep on "requests"...

2 kind of cameras: (or is this already possible on Max side ? When it's basically just single eye-offset. Still, nice handy UI button would make this user-friendly on Renderer's side)

-Stereoscopic Late-long 360° (already possible, but without stereoscopy)
-Regular and Stereoscopic 6X1 Cubemap (I didn't know this archaic format would resurface, but I quickly understood from example it provides least distortion up and down)

((You don't need any app to read these, the VR system from Samsung automatically does, but if you want to build advanced UI you can use pretty much anything...Unity would be easiest true))



AND to continue :- )

Vray has new sampling system. Don't care at all. But...
...they can now sample GI reflective caustics properly and showed impressive example. My jaw dropped. Looked (at least that's what the charming guy, Lon Grohn promised) production ready.

We seriously need that too ;- )

And to end it with some super positive example that made me chuckle, when Dave Bullock from Hayes Davidson basically repeated some of the stuff about Corona I said last year, even answering crowd question about settings (classic..) with:
"You just press the button, and that's it" :- ). Showcased his work using luxurious MonteCarlo apartments (100mil. each ?) from Richard Rogers, with basically minimal post-production. Was absolutely stunning, very friendly and nice chap too.

I've written quite few notes on Hayes-Davidson's presentations, if anyone is interested. Best speech ever.

[Ondra]

I was also in SOA, met cecofuli (who confused me as hell since I didn't know what he looked like in life )

Now you know how it feels mister "I've been working out and shaved my hair" :D

[Juraj]

LOL. Ok but I've been forced to re-grow it so everything will get into normal next year :- )

(the hair thing was symbolic gesture actually not fashion/practical thing, I've just kept it)

[arqrenderz]

All this VR thing is anywere expected to hit the roadmap??

[cecofuli]

Welcome back, friend =)
Sorry Juray =) but it was nice to see you in real )

[gabyanz]

I also was in Venice this year... and you are absolutely right Juraj, Dave Bullok made a wonderful presentation and showed FANTASIC images... perhaps the best interiors of the whole SOA...
I've thought they were made with Corona before he said that ;)

I also think that the cube camera 6+1 (or the spherical one) could be a very nice option in Corona . I've also tried the Samsung gear, and that was a REALLY nice VR experience. Even moving the head fast the image was stable and absolutely convincing.

I want to do the same with Corona :)

[twcg]

I also think that the cube camera 6+1 (or the spherical one) could be a very nice option in Corona.

YES! This would be awesome!

Does anyone know if there is a way to render a 12x1 stereo cubemap from 3Ds Max without VRay 3 or Octane?!

[peterguthrie]

yep, a nice handy UI button for this would be GREAT!

[peterguthrie]

bumpy bump bump

would it be possible for some clever person to script a 6x1 camera or is it best done as part of corona?

and stereoscopic is basically just copying a camera over 6.3cm (is that correct?) even so, some kind of stereo tick box would be a great addition

(maybe this should be under requests??)

[romanbuha]

Hi,

I also tested some renderings in these glasses that were done in latest VRay 3.2
I have to say it is really looks amazing!
It will be awesome if we can do renderings for Gear VR glasses in Corona!

[peterguthrie]

bumpy bump bump - getting to the point where we are going to have to convert and entire project back to vray as we need to provide stereo cubemap renders.

I know lasse rode has been trying a fairly manual method of doing it in corona. Any news on an official solution?

[jjaz82]

hi
i'm doing some test with vr and i noticed that cube method 6+1 are better than sferical, but in corona i don't find this method,
in the future it will be implemented?
thank you
Nicola

[maru]

Currently only spherical maps are supported. Making them into cube maps would require some conversion. But if the quality is indeed worse with spherical maps (examples would be appreciated) then it probably won't improve after the conversion. We might consider cube maps support in the future as there were quite numerous requests about it. I wonder if making a manual rig (6 cameras with 90 deg view angle) would be possible. :)

[racoonart]

But if the quality is indeed worse with spherical maps (examples would be appreciated) then it probably won't improve after the conversion.

You need to render a higher resolution to achieve the same quality as in a cubemap. It's actually quite simple:
4 of the 6 sides of the cube can be combined for a complete 360° panorama (only missing top and bottom) - thus, if you want to have the exact same quality at this horizon pixel line you need to render the same resolution in the spherical format.

Example:
let's say we want to render a 6x1 cubemap in a 6000 x 1000 pixels resolution. To get the same quality in a spherical render we need to render it 4000 pixels wide.

cubemap number of pixels to render: 6000x1000 = 6.000.000
spherical map pixels to render: 4000 x 2000 = 8.000.000
=> 133 % rendertime for the spherical image in comparison to the cubemap with more or less equal quality (+ you won't have ugly pole projection issues with cubemaps, equal noise level etc ...)

Spherical maps, in my opinion, are still better for animation since you won't run into encoding issues at seams + it's easier to get a 2:1 format into a h264 container than a 6:1 (3:2 would be way more practical in this case).