Pseudo3Dde en
From Planetk.de
Overview
Pseudo3D is a Java applet to visualise 3D models in a web browser. Different to many other applets of this kind, the model is not rendered in the browser. Instead, it relies on a number of precomputed 2D images. As a consequence, it is sufficient to have Java installed and activated to execute this applet. Special 3D engines are not required.
3D model from Zimmer et al.: PDE-Based Anisotropic Disparity-Driven Stereo Vision (2008)
Click and drag to view the model.
It might take a few seconds until all images are loaded and the animation becomes smooth.
Apart from simple models rendered by OpenGL, Pseudo3D processes basically all kinds of photographs of a 3D object. The variety of inputs might range from simple illumination models via complex raytracing results up to preprocessed medical image material. In principle, you can use any image sequence where all views join a common 3D point on their optical axes, and which can be viewed as a video clip.
Technical Description
In order to decide which of the input frames is to be displayed, all of them are annotated with their capturing direction on a virtual sphere. If the user drags and turns this sphere, the image closest to the user is shown - and the impression of a true 3D model visualisation arises.
The overall viewing angle can either span the whole sphere, or (and this is the most common scenario) just cover a fraction thereof. In the applet shown above, an angle of 90 degrees in longitude and 80 degrees in latitude has been used.
Depending on the sampling density of the sequence, the animation becomes smoother. However, this advantage is always bought with a higher amount of data that is to be downloaded to the beginning of each session. Thus, the total number of images per model is limited for most practical applications. One should note, though, that this tradeoff seldomly represents a true restriction: Users tend to rest for a longer period in one specific view, and will then move on. This is in particular true if all "interesting" spots are densely covered with (additional) images.
Further Examples
- View of a real-world milk can from 360/60 degrees
- The portal from above, but this time with a higher sampling rate and smaller angles
License
Pseudo3D is licensed under GNU GPL v3 and as free software, it might be used for both commercial and non-profit purposes, if potentially resulting programs are again published as GNU GPL. In this case, the source code of the respective programmes needs to be published. Pascal Gwosdek, the author of this applet, shall then still be mentioned in the headers of those files, or can be listed in an AUTHORS file.
Download
The applet can be downloaded here. This package also contains a file README which contains instructions about the applet and its input file format.
