@DATABASE The Problem @AUTHOR The Problem Stories Inc. @REMARK Distributed with The Stereo 3D program from The Problem Programming Inc. @REMARK ©1994 by The Problem Stories Inc. All Rights Reserved. @REMARK Brushmap,RDS,Anim,Theo,Amiga... @FONT topaz.font 7 @NODE Main "Stereo 3D" @{b}@{u}The Problem Stories Inc. Presents:@{ub}@{uu} @{fg highlight}Stereo 3D@{fg text} Guide, Welcome... Date: 15-10-'94 Features:@{fg fill} 1. Creates @{"Stereograms" LINK Stereo3D} using @{"Random Dots (RDS)" LINK RDS} and/or @{"Brushmaps" LINK BMS}. 2. Single and Multi coloured RDS's. 3. Various resizing modes for the brushes. 4. Unique combining of brushes and Random Dots. 5. Brush cutting and shifting functions. 6. Rendering multiple source-pictures in one go. 7. AGA supported!@{fg text} 1. @{"Getting Started " LINK Startup}.......How to create stereograms. 2. @{"Functions of Stereo 3D" LINK Functions}.......What do those buttons do? @ENDNODE @NODE Functions @FONT courier.font 11 @{fg highlight}An explanation of all the stereo 3D features...@{fg text} When you start Stereo 3D, you'll be presented with a window like this: @{bg fill}@{u}@{"[]" LINK Quit}@{"Stereo 3D " LINK Drag}@{"[]" LINK Depth}@{uu}@{bg background} | The Problem | | Welcome to Stereo3D 3.00 | | @{" Source Picture " LINK Source} | | @{" Brush " LINK Brush} | | @{" StereoGram " LINK Stereo} | | @{" About " LINK About} @{" Quit " LINK Quit} | +--------------------------+ * In the above 'window' select the option you want to no more about. * Use the [Contents] and [Retrace] buttons to go back. @ENDNODE @NODE About "What the hell is an About-requester?!?!" @FONT courier.font 11 @{fg highlight}About Stereo 3D@{fg text} @{bg fill}@{u}@{"[]" LINK Okay}@{"About Stereo 3D " LINK Drag}@{"[]" LINK Depth}@{uu}@{bg background} | About Stereo3D v3.0... | | (C) Copyright 1994 | | by The Problem Programming Inc. | | | | Stereo3D.Guide v2.0... | | (C) Copyright 1994 | | by The Problem Stories Inc. | | @{" Okay " LINK Okay} | +----------------------------------------+ @ENDNODE @NODE Depth "Depth Gadget" @{fg highlight}Depth Gadget?@{fg text} Shit man! You should know this by now! Pressing this little gadget causes the window to go to the background, or come back to the foreground... I think... @ENDNODE @NODE Okay "Okay man!" @{fg highlight}The Okay Button@{fg text} Press to accept (or cancel or close or whatever you prefer) the Window or Requester you are messing around in! Press it carefully, if you break the gadget you can not close the window anymore! @ENDNODE @NODE Drag "Drag it! Drag it!" @{fg highlight}The Okay Button@{fg text} Wowie... This is the title of a window. It displays the title! If you use your left mousebutton, you can actually pick the window up and @{b}Drag It All Around The Screen!!!@{ub}. Cool huh? Ooo, come on! @ENDNODE @NODE Startup "How to do a stereogram" @{fg highlight}How do I...@{fg text} @{b}To create a @{"Random Dot Stereogram" LINK RDS}:@{ub} ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ - press 'Source Pic' and select a picture to use as source. The picture should contain a 2 dimensional image of the 3D world you want to create. Stereo 3D will assume that colour 0 is the background and the highest colour is the foreground. You can draw these images in DPaint or any other art-program. If the filename ends with "000" then you can choose to activate @{"Multimode" LINK Multi}... - In the requester that appears you can choose to load a @{i}new@{ui} picture, @{i}view@{ui} the loaded picture or @{i}exit@{ui} to accept, and return to the main window. - when you want to create a 2 colour stereogram, you simply activate the '2 Colour RDS' function. - press 'Start Rendering' and a window appears showing progress. - when finished the stereogram image will be showed to you. Press mouse to accept. - in the requester that appears you will see information about the rendered stereogram. You can choose to @{i}save@{ui} it, @{i}view@{ui} it again, @{i}flush@{ui} it, or @{i}exit@{ui} back to the main window. Press 'Stereogram' in the mainwindow and the requester will be back. @{b}To create a @{"Brushmapped Stereogram" LINK BMS}:@{ub} ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ - press 'Source Pic' and select a picture and handle the requesters as explained above. - press 'Brush', select an image to use as a brushmap and handle the requesters in the same way you do when selecting a source picture. - activate the brushmode by clicking on 'Use Brush?' (checkmark appears) and activate the options you want to use in the same way. Select a Resize Methode by using the Resize-cyclegadget. - press 'Start Rendering' and wait until rendering finished. - now proceed as explained above. Go to @{"Functions of Stereo 3D" LINK Functions} for more info about the buttons and options in the program. All functions will be fully explained there. @ENDNODE @NODE Resize "Resize Methods" @{fg highlight}Brush Resizing@{fg text} Stereo 3D offers several different ways of resizing brushes. With the resize-cyclegadget you select one of them. You can only use this in Brush Mode (load a brush). @{bg fill}@{fg highlight}Cycle Between: Meaning: @{bg background}@{fg text} Don't Resize Tells Stereo 3D NOT to resize the selected brush. The brush will be cut at the offset you selected. Resize Entirely Resize brush completely to make sure that the complete brush is visible. The aspect ratio will NOT be changed! Resize X Only Only the brush's X-axis will be scaled. This means that the aspect ratio will change! Resize Less The brush will be resized in a way that often looks better. There are less half brushes. Resize Less X Only Only the x axis of the brush will be scaled in a way that results in less half brushes. @ENDNODE @NODE 2Col "2 Colour RDS" @{fg highlight}2 Colour RDS's@{fg text} With this option you tell the program that you would like your Random Dots in 2 Colours. That's really all there is to it... When not turned on, Stereo 3Dcwill generate an RDS using all the colours of the source-pics palette. @ENDNODE @NODE ShiftX "Shift X Brush" @{fg highlight}Shift the brush?@{fg text} Normal @{"brushmaps" LINK BMS} look a bit to 'ordered'. e.g.: If we assume that the word 'PROBLEM' is a brush, then Stereo 3D will normally generate a brushmapped stereogram like this: PROBLEMPROBLEMPROBLEMPROBLEM PROBLEMPROBLEMPROBLEMPROBLEM PROBLEMPROBLEMPROBLEMPROBLEM PROBLEMPROBLEMPROBLEMPROBLEM PROBLEMPROBLEMPROBLEMPROBLEM PROBLEMPROBLEMPROBLEMPROBLEM With the 'Shift X' option activated, the result will be like this: PROBLEMPROBLEMPROBLEMPROBLEM LEMPROBLEMPROBLEMPROBLEMPROB PROBLEMPROBLEMPROBLEMPROBLEM LEMPROBLEMPROBLEMPROBLEMPROB PROBLEMPROBLEMPROBLEMPROBLEM LEMPROBLEMPROBLEMPROBLEMPROB You see, much more interesting to look at. The brushes will not be put beneath eachother in a stracht line. Some 3D piccies will actually look better because of this. @ENDNODE @NODE RDSBrush "RDS In Brush?" @{fg highlight}Combining Brushes and Random Dots...@{fg text} This function is as far as we know, unique to RDS-programs on the @{"Amiga" LINK Amiga} When you use a brush with this option turned to on, Stereo 3D will fill all the blank spaces (pixels with the colour 0) with a Random Dot pattern. This will give the picture a certain je ne sais quoi... TIP: Use this option with a brush of a human face!!! @ENDNODE @NODE Source "The Source Image" @FONT courier.font 11 @{fg highlight}The Source-Image Options@{fg text} Selecting 'Source Picure' will bring up a window like this: @{bg fill}@{u}@{"[]" LINK Okay}@{" Source Picture " LINK Drag}@{"[]" LINK Depth}@{uu}@{bg background} | Current Picture Information... | | Name : Depth : | | Width: Height: | | @{" New Picture " LINK Newpic}@{" View Picture " LINK Viewpic} | | @{" Okay " LINK Okay} | +----------------------------------------+ @ENDNODE @NODE Newpic "Selecting a new source image..." @{b}New Source Picture@{ub} In the filerequester that will pop up, select the picture you want to use as the source for the stereogram. The image in this picture will be the one to be converted to the '3D-object'. The picture may be of any size and resolution and any number of colours (No HAM!) ranging from 2 to 256. It's palette is only important when you generate multi-coloured Random Dot Stereograms (not using a brush, since then the brush palette will be used!). If the filename of the picture you selected ends with "000" the @{"Multi-mode" LINK Multi} becomes active. After selecting, the SourcePic window will be back, showing information about the selected file(s). You can see the name, resolution, number of colours, and number of frames. @ENDNODE @NODE Viewpic "Viewing a source picture..." @{b}View Source Picture@{ub} Use this function to view the selected picture(s). The picture will be loaded, and displayed. Stereo 3D will wait for you to click the mouse. Left mouse button will exit viewmode. Right mousebutton will load and display the next frame (if any) of the animation. @{b}NOTE:@{ub} The Stereo3D viewer can not scroll! If the image is bigger than 640*512 then it will not be visible completely. It will not show pictures in Super Hires mode. They will be displayed in Hires. The view option is only there so you can make sure you loaded the right source image, and that is it's only purpose. The Stereo3D program WILL render every screenformat. Just save it, and use a real viewer! @ENDNODE @NODE Brush "Brush handling" @FONT courier.font 11 @{fg highlight}The Brush Options@{fg text} Selecting 'Brush' will bring up a Window like this: @{bg fill}@{u}@{"[]" LINK Okay}@{" Brush " LINK Drag}@{"[]" LINK Depth}@{uu}@{bg background} | Current Brush Information... | | Name : Depth : | | Width: Height: | | Start x: | | Resize Mode: @{"@| Options " LINK Resize} | | Shift X: @{" " LINK ShiftX} RDS in Brush:@{" " LINK RDSBrush} | | @{" New Brushmap " LINK Newbsh}@{" View Brushmap " LINK Viewbsh} | | @{" Cut Brush " LINK Cut}@{" Flush Brush " LINK Flushbsh} | | @{" Okay " LINK Okay} | +----------------------------------------+ @ENDNODE @NODE Newbsh "Select a new brushmap..." @{b}New Brush@{ub} In the filerequester that will pop up, select the picture you want to use as the brush for the stereogram. The image in this picture will be mapped to the '3D Object' in the source picture. The brush may be of any size and resolution and any number of colours (No HAM!) ranging from 2 to 256. Stereo 3D will always use the brush's palette if there is one. @ENDNODE @NODE Viewbsh "View the selected brushmap..." @{b}View Brush@{ub} Use this function to view the currently selected brush. Click left mousebutton to exit the viewer. @{b}NOTE:@{ub} The Stereo3D viewer can not scroll! If the image is bigger than 640*512 then it will not be visible completely. It will not show pictures in Super Hires mode. They will be displayed in Hires. The view option is only there so you can make sure you loaded the right brush image, and that is it's only purpose. @ENDNODE @NODE Cut "Cut..." @{b}Cut the Brush@{ub} This function is unique to Stereo 3D! Selecting it will show the brush. Hold the left mousebutton and drag the vertical line. On releasing the mousebutton, you will be returned to the brush window where the brushinfo states 'Start X:@{fg highlight}@{fg text}' The part of the brush to the RIGHT of this offset () will be used to create a stereogram. If the space to the RIGHT of the vertical dragline is too small, the brush will be wrapped back to the beginning. To use 'Cut Brush' you'll have to select a brush! @ENDNODE @NODE Flushbsh "Flush..." @{b}Flush the Brush@{ub} Pressing this button frees the currently loaded brush. Using this function you go back to Random Dot Mode. So, if you just rendered a brushmap, and you now want to render an RDS of the same source, simple press Flush Brush and start rendering again! @ENDNODE @NODE Stereo "The Stereogram..." @FONT courier.font 11 @{fg highlight}What to do when finished rendering...@{fg text} Most options in the window that pops up now are for use AFTER you rendered. It looks something like this: @{bg fill}@{u}@{"[]" LINK Okay}@{" Stereogram " LINK Drag}@{"[]" LINK Depth}@{uu}@{bg background} | Rendered Stereogram... | | Width: Height: | | Depth: | | Errormessages | | Multi: @{" " LINK Multi}to@{" " LINK Multi} 2 Colour RDS: @{" " LINK 2Col} | | @{"View Steregram " LINK Viewss}@{"Flush Stereogram " LINK Flushss} | | @{" Save StereoBitmap " LINK Save} | | @{" Start Rendering " LINK Start} | +----------------------------------------+ @ENDNODE @NODE Save "Save Stereogram..." @{b}Save Stereograms@{ub} Select 'Save Stereogram' to bring up a filerequester. Select a savename for the rendered screen. If all went well, the Stereogram window states 'Stereogram saved!'. You can either accept this, or ignore it... If you are in Multi mode (rendering more than one image at once) the saving will happen automatically. The savename will be asked as soon as you press Start Rendering, using the same filerequester. @ENDNODE @NODE Viewss "View the Stereogram..." @{b}View the rendered Stereogram@{ub} Use this to view the last rendered image. This may be the last frame of a Multi- session , the last rendered picture or, in case you interupt the rendering, the results so far. @ENDNODE @NODE Flushss "Flush the rendered image..." @{b}Flush Stereogram@{ub} This will erase the last rendered image from memory. After using this function, you can not save or view the stereogram anymore. It frees up memory, so it's usefull. @ENDNODE @NODE Multi "More than one..." @{b}Multi mode@{ub} Multimode will be activated if the selected sourcepicture has a name ending with '000'. Once activated, Multi- mode forces Stereo 3D to render all the pictures with the same basename in one go. In the boxes type the start and end framenumber. If the difference between the two numbers is 1, then only one frame will be rendered. No savename will be asked. If you decide to render more than 1 frame, you will be presented with a file requester. Use this to select a save-base-name. This way you can create animations, or render various source pictures using the same settings/brush. @{b}For example:@{ub} If you had selected 'WORK:Graphics/Frame.000', and the 'WORK:Graphics/" directory would also contained 'Frame.001' and 'Frame.002' then Stereo 3D would render all frames in the range 'startframe' to 'endframe', using the same settings for all of them. @{b}IMPORTANT:@{ub} The frames may all have different sizes, viewmodes or palettesizes. Multi-mode was designed to enable you to render multiple source pictures using the same settings, not only for animations! If you render in multicolour RDS mode and all frames have a different number of colours the program WILL use all the colours, so you don't have to start over again when you want to change the palettesize, sceenwidth or whatever... @ENDNODE @NODE Start "Start Rendering..." @FONT courier.font 11 @{fg highlight}WARNING!!!@{fg text} After pressing Start Rendering all the windows will be closed. A new window called 'Stereo 3D Progress' will open: @{bg fill}@{u}@{"[]" LINK Okay}@{" Stereo 3D Progress... " LINK Drag}@{"[]" LINK Depth}@{uu}@{bg background} | | | Messages... | | @{" " LINK Progress} | | @{u} @{uu} | | @{" STOP! " LINK Stop} | +----------------------------------------+ @ENDNODE @NODE Stop "Stop rendering..." @{b}STOP!@{ub} Pressing this button will interupt rendering. You will be returned to the Stereogram window, which will state 'Rendering Interupted'. If you press 'STOP!' while Stereo3D is loading, saving, resizing or adding an RDS to a brush the button will not respond immediately! The render will be interupted as soon as these operations are finished. Just wait a few seconds, and you're back in the Stereogram window. @ENDNODE @NODE Progress "The Progress indicator" @{b}The Progress indicator@{ub} Here you can see how the rendering is in progress. The bar will fill up with blue from left to right. If it's completely filled, the stereogram is finished and you are returned to the Stereogram window. (As if you didn't know this stuff anyway...) @ENDNODE @NODE Quit "Quit Program" @{fg highlight}WARNING!!!@{fg text} This will exit Stereo 3D. Its use is not recommended for less than expert users. Note that The Problem will not take responsabillity for damage to you, or your system caused by slecting 'Quit Program'... @ENDNODE @NODE Stereo3D "Random Dot Stereograms?" @{fg highlight}What is a stereogram anyway?@{fg text} A stereogram is an image that can give the impression of depth in a seemingly mess of randomly placed and coloured dots. Your eyes are not both on the same spot (I hope) so you always see an object from two slightly different viewing angles. If you would take two pictures that are slightly different from eachother, you can trick your brain in to thinking that it is seeing a 3D world. Both eyes see one of the pictures. A stereogram does this by deviding the screen in a number of columns, filled with a pattern of random dots or the pattern of a brush. This will result in either an @{"Random Dot Stereogram" LINK RDS} or a @{"Brushmapped Stereogram" LINK BMS}. The distance between two columns determains the depth. To make your eyes see 3D in a stereogram, you have to look through the screen in stead of at it. What happens is that both eyes see a different image. The same happens when you look through those Red-Green glasses at a Red-Green picture. One eye will see the red image (through the green glass) and the other will see the green image (through the red glass). With an autostereogram you have to do this yourself by staring at near-infinity: @{b}O@{ub} <------------- '3D object' Point A___ @{b}/ \ @{ub} ____Point B \ @{b}/ \ @{ub}/ @{b}=====/=====\=====@{ub} <----- Your screen @{b}/ \ / \ (*) (*)@{ub} <----- Your eyes Point 'A' and Point 'B' represent the same point of the object. But they are not on the same location. What you need to do to get them on the same spot again, is to make sure that each of your eyes sees only one of the point. Your left eye looks at point A, your right eye at point B. This results in the illusion of the object laying behind the screen. By varying the distance between the columns we create the illusion that there is an object. Each point had its own distance behind the screen. The distance between two columns is bigger when that point of the object should be closer, and smaller when the object is further away. In real life you can see this too! If you look at a close-by object with one eye, and then with the other, it seems as if the object 'jumps' to another position. If you do the same thing for a far-away object, you will see that this 'jump' is smaller. (the columns are closer to eachother...) Let's say that a random pattern looks like this: @{bg highlight}GJFKDLSWIT@{bg background} If the source-image was completely black (no 3D objects) and we would render a stereogram using the above brush, we would get something like this: GJFKDLSWITGJFKDLSWITGJFKDLSWITGJFKDLSWITGJFKDLSWITGJFKDLSWIT GJFKDLSWITGJFKDLSWITGJFKDLSWITGJFKDLSWITGJFKDLSWITGJFKDLSWIT GJFKDLSWITGJFKDLSWITGJFKDLSWITGJFKDLSWITGJFKDLSWITGJFKDLSWIT GJFKDLSWITGJFKDLSWITGJFKDLSWITGJFKDLSWITGJFKDLSWITGJFKDLSWIT GJFKDLSWITGJFKDLSWITGJFKDLSWITGJFKDLSWITGJFKDLSWITGJFKDLSWIT GJFKDLSWITGJFKDLSWITGJFKDLSWITGJFKDLSWITGJFKDLSWITGJFKDLSWIT GJFKDLSWITGJFKDLSWITGJFKDLSWITGJFKDLSWITGJFKDLSWITGJFKDLSWIT GJFKDLSWITGJFKDLSWITGJFKDLSWITGJFKDLSWITGJFKDLSWITGJFKDLSWIT GJFKDLSWITGJFKDLSWITGJFKDLSWITGJFKDLSWITGJFKDLSWITGJFKDLSWIT GJFKDLSWITGJFKDLSWITGJFKDLSWITGJFKDLSWITGJFKDLSWITGJFKDLSWIT | | | | | | | | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | Try staring at the above field. If you do it correctly you should see 7 columns (in stead of 6!) laying behind the screen. If you can't see it, don't worry; it is a lot easier with real random dots or brushmaps. However, you could try this: O O Yes, it seems silly but if you can manage to look through the screen, so that you see three O's you're already starting to learn. Look through the screen right where the two O's are. You should clearly see that two O's move towards eachother until they reach eachother in the midle. You should be abled to look at the three O's for as long as you want. This sort of training can help you when you never saw a stereogram before. The number of colomns is determaint by the number of colours in the source picture. This means that the more colours the source image uses, the smaller the columns are. When useing brushes this results in VERY SMALL brushes when using too much columns. In the following table you find the guidelines to create a goodlooking stereogram: @{fg highlight}@{u} @{uu}@{fg text} |@{bg fill}@{u} Source Picture | Recommended @{uu}@{bg background}| | @{fg highlight}Width Depth (colours)@{fg text} | @{fg highlight}View(er)mode Brushmap Random Dots@{fg text} | | 320 1-5 (2-32) | Lowres Yes(!) Yes | | 320 6-8 (64-256) | Lowres No Yes(!) | | | | | 640 1-6 (2-64) | Hires Yes Yes | | 640 7-8 (128-256) | Hires No Yes(!) | | | | | >640 1-6 (2-64) | (Super)Hires Yes Yes | | >640 7-8 (128-256) | SuperHires No Yes | |@{u} | @{uu}| @ENDNODE @NODE RDS @{fg highlight}What is a Random Dot Stereogram?@{fg text} If you are reading this guide the right way, you already read the part about how a stereogram works. As you know, the screen gets devided in coloumns when a stereogram is generated. Every column is filled with the same pattern (when the source image is an empty screen!). In a Random Dot Stereogram this pattern is generated by filling one column with random colours, and copying it to the other columns. The number of coloumns depends on the number of colours in the source image. @ENDNODE @NODE BMS @{fg highlight}What is a Brushmapped Stereogram?@{fg text} If you are reading this guide the right way, you already read the part about how a stereogram works. As you know, the screen gets devided in coloumns when a stereogram is generated. Every column is filled with the same pattern (when the source image is an empty screen!). In a Brushmapped Stereogram this pattern is generated by filling one column with the colours of the brush, and copying it to the other columns. The number of coloumns depends on the number of colours in the source image. The size of a column depends on how many columns there are. This means that the brushes will be scaled smaller when the number of colours in the source image increases. To avoid loss of detail in the brush, a higher resolution is recommended. @ENDNODE @NODE Amiga "The Computer..." If you are not familiar with the term 'Amiga' please try to find a mental institution that suites you. You are probably not capable of handling Stereo 3D, so use the Quit function of AmigaGuide, turn off your Amiga (yes, THAT is an Amiga!) and try the Yellow Pages... @ENDNODE