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Boys' Toys, where are we going? - part 3 of 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

by Mike McNamee Published 01/12/2012

An additional advantage of the CGI route is that the vehicle may be placed in any number of locations with a change of computer files; a vehicle's colour and interior decor may also be changed with a swish of a mouse. The same applies to changing to special alloy wheels, hatchback v saloon v estate versions and so on. Such imagery is usually used to show proposed new models to management and focus groups.

It is at this stage that the photography opportunities emerge. Photographers have lost the job of photographing the protoype car in situ as too risky; so they go to the location and make a backplate and 360° pan instead - one door closes, another opens. Making the pans is specialised; the computer modelling uses an HDR image so that the lights (or sun) are accurately located and defined. These HDRs have a dynamic range as high as 26 f-stops and to see more we took ourselves off to specialist Spheron to learn more.

Spheron - 360° HDR Panoramas

The creation of 360° panoramas for use in CGI is a little more sophisticated than making a pictorial panorama (for say a wall print). The main difference is that the software for making CGI composites requires a 32-bit capture so that quality 'scene lighting' can be computed during the 'ray-tracing' phase of the workflow. During this part of the process the hemisphere which surrounds the object (typically a motor vehicle) is 'read' by the software so that completely realistic reflections and shadows can be made. The shape of the reflecting surface (say a car bonnet or window) is known from the engineering (CAD) drawing, the surface qualities are also specified (colour, reflectivity, transparency in the case of glass components). The computer then determines not only what is reflected in the bonnet/window (the clouds and surrounding tall buildings for example) but also calculates the amount of light any given component will contribute towards shaping and filling shadows, and any colour influence that the fill light may carry. For a window it will also have to compute how much of the scene is reflected and how much remains visible from transmitted light.

To learn more we called in to see Peter Taylor from Spheron at their Milton Keynes offices, partly to continue a conversation that we started at photokina. The heart of the Spheron system lies in its 32-bit, native capture of scenes - that's a whopping 26 f-stops. In practice this means that a dark corner of a factory basement can be captured but if there is a window, the scene outside can also be pulled out. In the example used by Spheron a panorama of a period home is demonstrated. Detail may be extracted from inside the fireplace at the shadow's end but then the windows, which at first glance seem to be totally blown out, may be rendered so that you can explore the buildings outside which are bathed in strong sunlight. The incandescent bulbs of the chandelier are also blown out in a normal view but the program can extract data right down to the shape of the filament. Such detail is important for accurate rendering in CGI and some of the subtlety of surface response to light is very dependent on both strength and shape of the light source.

The 3-D element of the panorama is provided via a calibrated 16mm fisheye Nikkor, mounted so that it may be spun around its nodal point. The hardware in no way looks like a camera (other than the lens); nothing moves in terms of a shutter, aperture, reflex mirror - is a simple tube, but only from the outside! Such is the calibration and internal correction of distortion in the system that distance measurements may be made from any point in a room to another. This is a massive plus for scene of crime work when such matters need to be recorded. A converse of this measurement is that nodal points from the scene may be extracted and fed back to create mapping data for CGI, a complete reverse of the normal use that was employed to create a virtual environment for an animated movie. Movies are, of course one of the main income providers from Spheron's technology - their business is divided essentially into creative stuff (CGI, movies making pictorial panoramic walkthroughs) and 'scientific/industrial' stuff (which includes scene of crime, factory maintenance, large project progress mapping and so on). This second application is backed by a sophisticated database which allows, for example, scene of crime notes to be added to the panorama or, in an industrial example, to link off to specifications of, say, a pump depicted in a scene, or perhaps electrical wiring overlays.

If this all sounds very clever, it is! It does come at a price and it is unlikely that a non-specialist jobbing photographer will be able to make the purchase of a system pay for itself; kit such as this is for high value projects or, at the very least, high volume. Moofe, who we also chatted to at photokina are a company who have exploited the technology with great success.

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Contact Mike McNamee

1st Published 01/12/2012
last update 21/07/2022 08:46:23

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