Please give advice to a rookie, ME......

[janthorsoe]

Please can anyone recomend some great free tools for me to try as I am pretty new to this area, and do not want to spend money on something that I do not know how to measure against other products.

I have been looking for some stiching tools and some viewers, but frankly there is a lot of no good stuff here on the internet. I want to start out with what i got...a Canon 20D Digital SLR with 18 mm lens.

My aim is at some point to do full screen 360 VR shots of rooms.

Thanks for your input.

Best,
Jan T. Andersen

 

[Hans-74]

--- In [hidden email], "janthorsoe" <janthorsoe@...> wrote:
>
> Please can anyone recomend some great free tools for me to try as I am pretty new to this area, and do not want to spend money on something that I do not know how to measure against other products.
>
> I have been looking for some stiching tools and some viewers, but frankly there is a lot of no good stuff here on the internet. I want to start out with what i got...a Canon 20D Digital SLR with 18 mm lens.
>
> My aim is at some point to do full screen 360 VR shots of rooms.

The first and most important is a panohead.
You can do simple landscape panoramas without but for doing mor complex pano like interiors you need it especially if you want to do sphericals.

You do not say where you live but if you are in Europe you can start here
http://www.360tacticalvr.com/systems/rotators.html

All stitchers have demos you can start with. Try them out. PTGui,  Autopano and Hugin are the first choices.

When you learnt how to stitch you can begin looking for viewers.
You can use Quicktime to start out with for checking out the result. PTgui has built in QTVR creator.

When you are ready to publish panos look for the flash viewers.

Hans
www.panoramas.dk

[janthorsoe]

Thank you for your kind advice Hans, I will take your advice into consideration.

And I can tell you that we are contrymen, as I am living in Slagelse.

Best,
jan

--- In [hidden email], "Hans" <hans@...> wrote:

>
> --- In [hidden email], "janthorsoe" <janthorsoe@> wrote:
> >
> > Please can anyone recomend some great free tools for me to try as I am pretty new to this area, and do not want to spend money on something that I do not know how to measure against other products.
> >
> > I have been looking for some stiching tools and some viewers, but frankly there is a lot of no good stuff here on the internet. I want to start out with what i got...a Canon 20D Digital SLR with 18 mm lens.
> >
> > My aim is at some point to do full screen 360 VR shots of rooms.
>
> The first and most important is a panohead.
> You can do simple landscape panoramas without but for doing mor complex pano like interiors you need it especially if you want to do sphericals.
>
> You do not say where you live but if you are in Europe you can start here
> http://www.360tacticalvr.com/systems/rotators.html
>
> All stitchers have demos you can start with. Try them out. PTGui,  Autopano and Hugin are the first choices.
>
> When you learnt how to stitch you can begin looking for viewers.
> You can use Quicktime to start out with for checking out the result. PTgui has built in QTVR creator.
>
> When you are ready to publish panos look for the flash viewers.
>
> Hans
> www.panoramas.dk
>

[Hans-74]

--- In [hidden email], "janthorsoe" <janthorsoe@...> wrote:
>
> Thank you for your kind advice Hans, I will take your advice into consideration.
>
> And I can tell you that we are contrymen, as I am living in Slagelse.
>

I suspected that.
If you have not done it already you can also start doing cylindric panos using you free Canon Photostitch which came with your camera.

It does quite a good job doing simple cylindric panoramas.

Hans

[needakeeper]

I started out with Realviz Stitcher.  I recently had the logic board replaced on my MBP and my 5.5 and 5.6 versions of Stitcher were deactivated.  I can bore you with the details of my attempts to have the problem rectified, but the result is the same. I still have two non-functional versions of formerly fully-functional versions of Stitcher.  Hundreds of dollars down the drain.  I was so irritated that I almost said a bad word.

Autodesk does not provide phone support for Stitcher, they can't issue a new activation key even though I can provide my serial numbers and option numbers, and they apparently do not have records of my original activation with Realviz in 2007.  Furthermore, when Autodesk took over from Realviz, the extensive Stitcher forum was no longer available.  

If you decide to buy software, make sure that adequate support is available and there are folks in the forums or groups that can assist.  I am now the proud owner of PTgui, and I am not going back!

Stephani


--- In [hidden email], "janthorsoe" <janthorsoe@...> wrote:

>
> Please can anyone recomend some great free tools for me to try as I am pretty new to this area, and do not want to spend money on something that I do not know how to measure against other products.
>
> I have been looking for some stiching tools and some viewers, but frankly there is a lot of no good stuff here on the internet. I want to start out with what i got...a Canon 20D Digital SLR with 18 mm lens.
>
> My aim is at some point to do full screen 360 VR shots of rooms.
>
> Thanks for your input.
>
> Best,
> Jan T. Andersen
>

[Jeffrey Martin | 360Cities.net]

a panohead is very important. go to the hardware store, right away! you can
make your own, it will work as well as something you pay hundreds of $ for.
http://wiki.panotools.org/Heads#Self_made Because stitching software is so
good, you only need to get the camera position correct - anything more is
simply convenience, or showing off. (yes, both have their place)

but hey - you don't need that or a tripod. all you need is a string and a
weight
http://www.philohome.com/tripod/shooting.htm
the egyptians used it and they probably weren't the first ;) 18mm will make
this harder - but for single row, with practice, shooting with enough light,
it's better than a tripod for many reasons.

for software, use Hugin, it's free. A bit clunky because the open source
developers building it only have so much free time, and there aren't a huge
amount of people developing it. But it's a great program.

If you want really easy stitching, pay for ptgui (or try the free trial).
Ptgui is fantastic.

Many people prefer Autopano pro which is a very well made program; but the
geekier types I guess prefer the really deep control you can get from ptgui.
(This list is more biased towards ptgui in general)

have fun, post some examples soon!

Jeffrey Martin
www.360cities.net - The World in Virtual Reality
tel. [phone] / skype jeffrey.s.martin


 Re: Please give advice to a rookie, ME......
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PanoToolsNG/message/33966;_ylc=X3oDMTJzbjU2OWVrBF9TAzk3MzU5NzE1BGdycElkAzE4MjI3ODQ4BGdycHNwSWQDMTcwNTAwNjQ5NgRtc2dJZAMzMzk2NgRzZWMDZG1zZwRzbGsDdm1zZwRzdGltZQMxMjU2OTEwODQx>
Posted
by: "Hans" [hidden email]
<[hidden email]?Subject=+Re%3A%20Please%20give%20advice%20to%20a%20rookie%2C%20ME%2E%2E%2E%2E%2E%2E>
 panoramicsdk
<http://profiles.yahoo.com/panoramicsdk>  Fri Oct 30, 2009 4:24 am (PDT)

--- In [hidden email] <PanoToolsNG%40yahoogroups.com>,
"janthorsoe" <janthorsoe@...> wrote:
>
> Please can anyone recomend some great free tools for me to try as I am
pretty new to this area, and do not want to spend money on something that I
do not know how to measure against other products.
>
> I have been looking for some stiching tools and some viewers, but frankly
there is a lot of no good stuff here on the internet. I want to start out
with what i got...a Canon 20D Digital SLR with 18 mm lens.
>
> My aim is at some point to do full screen 360 VR shots of rooms.

The first and most important is a panohead.
You can do simple landscape panoramas without but for doing mor complex pano
like interiors you need it especially if you want to do sphericals.


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]