Mobius (virtual dolly)

[Milosz Hermanowicz1537186159]

Does anyone know if there is a way to do a mobius zoom in BT (virtual dolly as in Mantra VR plugin)?

 

thank you

Milosz

[Cristobal Bolaños]

Hi Milos!

Let me check if I understood you well. What you are aiming is to create a zoom in which there's an illusion of parallax because of the deformation of the edges of the image, as if there were a camera inside a 360 sphere zooming (ore moving around) from the inside.

That can be made throughout keyframing on the VR View and the VR Stitch effects, having selected previously the Tiny Planet mapping. 

You can choose between two different ways:

- Inside the VR Stitch: on the Output Camera tab, select the Tiny Planet Mapping. You have to deselect the Optical Flow parameter. because it does not work in combination with the Tiny Planet mapping. Now, move the Yaw, pitch, and roll until you have the desired. Then, animating with the Focal Length, you will be able to zoom in or out. Keep in mind that you will get the desired effect as long as you have the distortion on the edges, that's why not every shot is capable of creating that ilusion.

- Inside the VR View: first you need to make your stitching in the VR Stitch node. Then, you can put on top the VR View mode, or render the video or 360 still image. In the VR View select the Tiny Planter mapping. As in the first way, now you can animate through keyframes the focal length, yaw, pitch and roll until you get the desired result. You can make different camera moves, not only the zoom in effect. I'd recommend this way, because although it requires a pre-render, things will be smoother in terms of playback.

Hope this helps!

Let me know if you have any technical issue.

Cheers,
Cristóbal 

 

[Milosz Hermanowicz1537186159]

Thanks Cristobal for your answer.

if I understand we’ll, you’ve described the way to generate a zoom in a 2D video out of a 360 video.

In contrast, I’d like to generate a 360 video with the illusion of movement inside the sphere (virtual dolly). Of course it’s always limited to some maximum range but that’s ok.

I don’t know if it’s possible.

[Cristobal Bolaños]

Now I see. Sorry for the misunderstanding.

Animating the camera from the inside of a sphere is made through the Tiny Planet Mapping.  As you can see in this gif, the camera looks like it is rotating from the center of the sphere:

 

 

However, I'm not sure if the parallax effect you're looking for is achieved through this mapping. Let me do some research and I'll get to you as soon as possible.

Cheers,
Cristóbal