1/16/2014 MEDIA OCU-3D PLUGIN SUITE USER GUIDE. Introduction to OCU-3D Plugin Suite for After Effects CC/CS DeCS Media GmbH

Transcription

1 1/16/2014 DECS MEDIA GMBH OCU-3D PLUGIN SUITE USER GUIDE Introduction to OCU-3D Plugin Suite for After Effects CC/CS DeCS Media GmbH

2 Contents 1. Introduction Installation Adobe Settings Installation Issues OCU.DFS OCU.RENDER D Picture Generation Entering license codes System requirements Legal Notice Demo Version Contact... 19

3 1. Introduction OCU-3D Plugin Suite is a collection of plug-ins for Adobe After Effects CC/CS and Adobe Premiere CC/CS for stereoscopic and auto-stereoscopic conversion and manipulation. It includes two plugins at the moment, OCU.DFS and OCU.RENDER. The plugin suite is available for Windows 7/8 64Bit at the moment; other versions can be obtained on request. OCU plugins are designed to work with 8 bit and 16 bit images. The resulting depth images can also be calculated as 8 bit or 16 bit images, resulting in a value range of or Installation Download the installer from the website at and save it to your computer. Double-click the file DeCSMedia-OCU-3D-Plugins x64.exe to execute it. If you are asked whether you want to allow DeCSMedia-OCU-3D-Plugins x64.exe to make changes to your computer click Yes. Figure 1: Welcome screen of the installer Figure 2: License Agreement The Welcome screen will be shown, click Next to continue, see Figure 1. The next screen shows the license Agreement, you have to accept the license agreement to continue (Figure 2). It is essential to set the environment variable PATH to the bin subdirectory of the installation as there are some dlls which are needed by the plugins. In the next dialog select : Add OCU-3D Plugins Suite to the system PATH for the current user or Add OCU-3D Plugins Suite to the system PATH for all users.

4 Figure 3: Add environment variable in installer Sometimes setting the PATH in the installer doesn t work as expected, e.g. if you are installing it as a user without administrative rights and use a different account to execute the installer. In this case select Add OCU-3D Plugins Suite to the system PATH for all users. The next step is to select the correct installation folder of After Effects, see Figure 4. The plugins have to be installed in the subfolder Plug-Ins of Adobe After Effects. If you want to use the OCU 3D-Plugins in After Affects and Premiere you should install the plugins in the subfolder MediaCore of the folder Adobe\Common\, e.g. C:\Program Files\Adobe\Common\Plug-ins\7.0\MediaCore. Click OK to select a folder and click Next. Figure 4: Destination Folder selection, click browse to locate the Plug-Ins Folder of after Affects. Select the Plugin-Ins Folder and click ok.

5 Figure 5: Select Start Menu Folder Figure 6: Installing the plugins Figure 5 and Figure 6 show the following dialogs. Choose whether to create a start menu entry which is not necessary but provides a link for un-installation. After clicking Finish in the last dialog your plugin suite is installed and ready to use. Start Adobe After Effects or Adobe Premiere and search for the plugins in the list of available effects. The plugins are located in the category OCU Plugins Adobe Settings When using the OCU.DFS plugin it is essential to set the Adobe After Effects and Premiere settings correctly. Especially the setting of Resolution/Down Sample Factor is essential for the quality of the result. Always set this to Full (see Figure 7). Figure 7: Resolution/Down Sample Factor settings in Adobe AE 1.3. Installation Issues OCU plug-ins use Qt components internally and there for the QtCore4.dll is needed. It is installed with the OCU plug-ins. However Windows sometimes messes up the PATH variable and the dll is not found.

6 In case of problems while starting the application or executing the plug-ins, make sure the PATH variable contains the bin sub-folder of your installation. Figure 8 shows a typical error message in After Effects. Figure 8: Path error in After Effects In this case, set the PATH environment variable for your user manually. Go the start menu and open the environment settings dialog. Figure 9: Starting environment variable editor

7 Select Edit environment variables for your account and add the bin subfolder containing the QtCore4.dll (e.g. C:\Program Files\Adobe\Common\Plug-ins\7.0\MediaCore\DeCS-OCU-3D-Plugins \bin ) to the PATH variable. 2. OCU.DFS DFS is an abbreviation of Depth from Stereo, which means that the plugin can estimate depth images from a pair of stereo images. A depth or disparity image is a gray-scale image which has the same resolution as the original image and pixels of these two images correspond to each other. Please note that depth and disparity are both used as synonyms is this document which is not entirely correct. Depth is obviously the distance of an object to the camera, whereas disparity describes the local displacement of an object in the two stereo images in pixel. So the correct word to use in this document is disparity, however depth is more common and therefor used here. To use the DFS plugin create a composition from your stereo footage. The footage may be located in two separate files or in one file packed as: SideBySide, TopBottom or 3DTile. Each file should be represented by a layer in the composition. Drop the effect to a layer. You will see following settings in the effect settings window (Figure 10). Figure 10: Settings for OCU.DFS plugin. Choosing the input type: SideBySide, TopBottom, 3DTile or Separate. SideBySide, TopBottom and 3DTile are packed formats, in which stereo images are packed in one single image (See Figure 11 for a SideBySide example). Separate is the input type you should choose if your stereo footage comes in two separate files. Choosing Separate as the input type, requires selecting a second video from the Second video drop box (Note that the second video should be also added as a layer to your composition). Choosing the output type: Depth image, Depth as alpha or 3DZ-Tile are available as output types. Depth image means, that the output will be a RGBA depth image. Depth as alpha means, that the calculated depth image will be placed in the alpha channel of the image for which it was calculated. 3DZ-Tile is a

8 packed format, where both stereo images and the calculated depth image will be packed in a single image (see Figure 12). A depth image is represented as a float image internally. If the image, for which the depth image should be calculated, is the left image, then objects in front of the screen will have negative depth values, objects on screen will have depth value 0 and objects behind the screen will have positive depth values. If the depth is calculated for the right image, then the sign of the depth switches, negative will be behind and positive in front of the screen plane. The parameters minimum depth and maximum depth in the effect settings (Figure 10) define an interval for the valid depth values. All values outside the interval will be cut off. Depth values inside the interval will be sampled and shifted to optimally represent the depth image as 8 bit or 16 bit grey scale image. You should set these values according to the actual footage you are editing. Please note that a minimum depth of -20 means, that a maximum horizontal parallax of -20 pixel is present in the image. (Parallax = horizontal shift of objects between the left and right image). So if the footage contains negative and positive parallax (i.e. elements are in front of and behind the screen plane) try to determine how high these values are and set them in the effects settings. A good rule of thumb is to look at the depth image and to adjust these values until you see a good contrast between the interesting objects and subjects in the depth image. Figure 11: Screenshot from the Avatar Trailer (Format SideBySide, 1280x720)

9 Figure 12: Result for conversion from SideBySide (Figure 11) to a 3DZTile format. Checking the check box Invert depth has the effect, that the depth map is inverted, which allows to have the same representation (for example darker depth values mean that the object is father away) regardless whether the depth is calculate for the left or right image. After adding the OCU.DFS plugin, the depth image is automatically calculated for the first image in the video (for the left image in SideBySide mode, the top image in TopBottom mode). Activating the checkbox Calculate for second video has the effect, that the depth image is calculated for the second image (right image in SideBySide mode, bottom image in TopBottom mode, etc.). Note that the color image in the output will be also switched (This may be important for Depth as alpha and 3DZ-Tile formats.) The last two parameters are the parameters for the optional refinement of the depth image. If the refinement is activated, a filter runs, which tries to adjust depth edges to the color edges of the corresponding input image. Refinement smoothness controls the edge sensitivity of the filter. Figure 13: LDV format as output of OCU.DFS plugin

10 If the depth image is chosen as output type, the LDV (Layered Depth video) format can be easily generated, which can be directly played on an auto-stereoscopic display from Dimenco 1 for example. To create LDV, simply combine the original layer and the calculated depth image side-by-side by using transformations for transition and scaling in after effects (see Figure 13). The parameter Quality allows you to increase the quality of the depth calculation vs. calculation speed. Better quality will need more calculation time. 1

11 3. OCU.RENDER The RENDER plugin allows rendering virtual views from color an image with additional depth information. It accepts the following input types: Depth as Alpha (depth information per pixel is stored in the alpha channel), 3DZ-Tile (see Figure 12) or LDV (see Figure 13, Figure 15). Depth values should vary from far away (< 0) to near (>0). This means that the objects near to the observer should be brighter than the objects that are further away. Invert your depth values if the opposite is the case (for example if the depth image was calculated for the left image with the OCU.DFS plugin). Figure 14: Settings for OCU.RENDER plugin. (OCU.DFS runs first to calculate depth information) The parameter Screen controls the position of the scene plane (frontal to the observer), the so called zero parallax plane. All points lying on this plane will appear to be lying on the screen plane when viewed in 3D. To control what will lie on the screen, simply choose an object in the scene and set its depth value (d) for the screen parameter. All objects with depth values greater then d will appear in front of the screen and all objects with depth values smaller then d will appear behind the screen. The parameter Scale controls the strength of the 3D effect. The scene is scaled around the zero parallax plane. A scale value of 0 results in a plain 2D image without depth. Be careful with scaling it is easy to add too much scale which distorts the images and causes headaches. The 3D effect may appear small in a small window but much greater on a big HD-TV. So test the 3D effect on your target screen when possible before exporting. Figure 15: Color and depth information provided to OCU.RENDER plugin (for Input type Depth as alpha depth information is in the alpha channel of the color image). Original source is screenshot from Trailer Star Wars 4K 3D (

12 Parameter Output type controls the type of the output. You can select between various stereo 3D formats, so as SingleView format and Tridelity5 format. SingleView can be used to render virtual views left and right from the main camera view to create multi-view results which can be used with autostereoscopic displays (see Figure 18). Tridelity5 is an intermediate format which can be mixed to a 3D image for an auto-stereoscopic Tridelity 2 display by suitable software such as OCU Play. Parameter Render View controls the virtual view which should be rendered. If output type is Single View the result will be a color image for a camera left (view<0) or right (view>0) from the main camera. If output type is a stereo format such as RedGreen, then the result will be a 3D view mixed from images at camera view = render view and camera view = render view + 1. This allows simulating a multi-view display by moving the slider from left to right in one of the stereo output type modes (see Figure 19). Figure 16: RedGreen result (scale 30). Original source is screenshot from Trailer Star Wars 4K 3D ( Figure 17: RedGreen result (scale 60). Original source is screenshot from Trailer Star Wars 4K 3D ( 2

13 View -4 View +4 Figure 18: Two outer views: View number -4 to the left from the original view and view number +4 to the right from the original view (scale 30). Original source is screenshot from Trailer Star Wars 4K 3D ( Red-Green of views -4 and -3

14 Red-Green of views 3 and 4 Figure 19: Red-Green results: scale 30, 3D view from camera view -4 to -3 (top) and from camera view 3 to 4 (bottom). Original source is screenshot from Trailer Star Wars 4K 3D (

15 4. 3D Picture Generation The OCU.3D plugin suite can also be used to convert free hand taken pictures to a 3D picture. Just choose a location you like, take two photos from different viewpoints and process them the same way as described in section 3 by OCU.DFS and OCU.RENDER plugins. You don t need to take special care of adjusting your camera positions. Simply take one picture of the object or person you wish to have in 3D and step to the left or right side and take another picture. The OCU.DFS plug-in tolerates some vertical motion between the two pictures (see Figure 20) but it is better to take pictures with horizontal parallax only. So move to the right for the second picture and do not move to the top or bottom. The following figures show some examples of tourist photos in Japan converted to 3D by the OCU.3D plugin suite software. Figure 20: Original left and right pictures (2240x1488 pixels) Of course all the options available for video computation are also available for pictures. So you can define the amount of depth which is the same as the strength of the 3D effect using the available options. Currently images up to 35 Megapixel are supported on a GPU with 1 GB of VRAM. More VRAM on the GPU allows higher resolutions.

16 Figure 21: Red-Green result of figure 16 (2240x1488 pixels) Figure 22: Original left and right pictures

17 Figure 23: RedGreen result of Figure Entering license codes To get rid of the limitations of the demo version purchase a license code in our online shop. We use Swreg ( to handle all license requests. Once you selected your desired products and confirmed the purchase a license key will be automatically sent to your address. To activate the purchased plugin or the plugin suite go to the windows start menu and select the Register OCU.3DPlugins entry. This will start a small registration program where you can choose which product you wish to install and let you enter the code. Simply copy the license number from your and enter it in the lower field, shown in Figure 24

18 Figure 24: Registration dialog Press OK to check the entered license code and after successful activation you may close the registration application by pressing Cancel. You will have to restart Adobe After Effects or Adobe Premiere to finish your purchase. 7. System requirements - Dual Core CPU with 2.0 GHz or better - 4 GB of RAM or more - OpenCL 1.1 capable GPU with min. 1 GB of memory (VRAM) - OpenCL 1.1 capable GPU driver - 20 MB free hard disk capacity for program installation - Windows 7/8 - Valid license for Adobe After Effects CC/CS 4 or newer, or Adobe Premiere CC/CS 4 or newer

19 6. Legal Notice 2013 DeCS Media GmbH. All rights reserved. No part of this document may be reproduced, whatever the form of exploitation, without the prior permission of DeCS Media GmbH. Remember that the contents of this document are protected by intellectual property laws. The contents of this document are for informational purposes only, are subject to change without notice and should not be construed as a commitment by DeCS Media GmbH. DeCS Media GmbH assumes no responsibility for any errors or inaccuracies that may appear in this document. Remember that the images that appear in this document may be protected under existing intellectual property laws. The unauthorized incorporation of such material into a new work may constitute a violation of the intellectual property rights of the owner. Be sure to obtain the necessary permits from the copyright owner. DeCS Media GmbH registered in the Handelsregister Kiel Nr KI 7. Demo Version The demo version is fully functional; the only limitation is that a copyright watermark is added to every computed image. Contact us for a full version to get rid of the watermark or obtain a license key in our online shop. Contact In case of questions or problems or for feature requests please contact support@decsmedia.com. DeCS Media GmbH Schauenburger Str Kiel / GERMANY